BTC and SOL Continue To Chop Along

With the last FOMC meeting of the year behind us, crypto markets continue their choppy and violent nature. BTC has traded between $93k and $89k since the infamous meeting, with intense moves in both directions. The past hour has seen a strong wick down on the hourly, wiping out over $130m in long positions. With the hawkish commentary from Fed Chair Powell, crypto seems poised to be stuck in these sideways markets for the near term. Next week sees a fair amount of important macro news with CPI and NFP, and these reports could lead to some direction coming back to the market. With the Fed having a hawkish stance going into 2026, inflation coming in lower and a bad jobs report could lead to the market expecting another rate cut. Outside of macro, BTC and friends have minimal news going on with the holidays fast approaching. Trading volume continues to dwindle, leading to these extreme moves we see on the charts. 

Altcoins are faring no better, with Solana down 2% on the day so far. Solana has been subject to the same choppiness as the other major cryptos, and reached a local high of nearly $145 on Tuesday of this week. With Breakpoint going on, one might expect the conference to push more interest into Solana on the charts, but this hasn’t occurred. SOL has higher funding rates than many of its peers at the moment, with 10-11% annualized ranges across most exchanges, both centralized and decentralized. Options markets are heavily skewed towards puts, with volatility being fairly expensive for puts in the $100 to $130 strike range for the 26DEC25 expiry. Open interest strongly favors puts as well, showing us that the market is expecting more downward price action into the end of the year.