On Friday, Dec. 19, about 31,000 Bitcoin options with roughly $2.7 billion notional value are due to expire, a smaller-than-average batch. Coinglass cites max pain near $88,000 and total BTC options OI at $52.5 billion, while Deribit shows $2.3 billion OI at the $100,000 strike. Spot markets have weakened throughout the week.

On Wednesday, PlanB said selling from long‑time holders and technical traders is offsetting demand, leaving Bitcoin range‑bound. Joe Consorti added on December 16, 2025 that further declines are possible, citing past drawdowns of 44% and 54%. BTC briefly rebounded from $85,000 to near $88,000 before slipping back to $87,500.

Total crypto market capitalization fell by $140 billion to $3.02 trillion in late Monday trading, with Bitcoin dropping to $85,200 after losing $90,000 support. BTC hovered just below $86,000 during Tuesday’s Asian session amid heightened volatility. The decline marked the lowest level since the December 2 leverage flush.

A dense slate of U.S. economic releases from Dec. 15 to 19 has traders bracing for turbulence, while Bitcoin briefly dipped below $88,000 in a late Sunday slide. Tuesday features October retail sales and the November jobs report; Thursday brings CPI and the Philly Fed index; Friday includes Core PCE, housing, expectations, and sentiment.

Bitcoin stayed pinned near the $90,000 support over the weekend, briefly slipping below it late Saturday. On December 13, 2025, Alphractal's Joao Wedson called the zone "critical on-chain support," while other analysts pointed to a bearish consolidation and stress metrics with Relative Unrealized Loss nearing ~10% of market cap. BTC was around $90,300 at the time of writing.

On Friday, Dec. 12, around 39,000 BTC options worth about $3.6 billion expire, alongside 247,000 ETH contracts totaling $768 million, for roughly $4.3 billion in notional. BTC's put/call stands near 1.1 with max pain around $90,000, while ETH's is 1.24 with max pain at $3,100; spot prices remain range-bound.

Santiment said Monday that a net 403,200 BTC—about 2.1% of total supply—has left centralized exchanges over the past year, even as Bitcoin trades below $90,000. Glassnode data show that only 14.7% of Bitcoin’s supply now sits on exchanges. Analysts point to mixed technical signals and a possible price floor between $74,000 and $77,000.

At the UBS Global Technology and AI conference, Western Union CFO Matthew Cagwin presented a new "stable card" designed to help recipients in high-inflation countries preserve the value of remittances. The card will hold USD-pegged stablecoins and sits within a wider strategy that includes Western Union's own USD Payment Token and a Solana-based Digital Asset Network linking digital and fiat payment rails, according to Cagwin.

Cryptocurrency markets remained stable through the weekend as traders prepare for the Federal Open Market Committee's monetary policy meeting on Wednesday, December 18. Markets assign an 88.4% probability to a 25-basis-point rate cut, which would lower the federal funds rate to 3.5%–3.75%. Key labor market data releases this week include job openings data on Tuesday and initial jobless claims on Thursday.