Remember that moment when you refreshed your portfolio Sunday morning and felt your stomach drop? Yeah, me too. Bitcoin had quietly slipped below $88,000, altcoins were bleeding double-digits, and the entire timeline was screaming “bear market confirmed.” Fast forward less than 48 hours and we’re staring at $91,500 again like nothing ever happened. Welcome to crypto in December 2025 – the season of violent shakes that somehow still end in higher highs.
The Weekend That Tried to Break the Bull Market
Let’s be honest – the drop caught a lot of us off guard. Friday closed calm, Saturday felt sleepy, then Sunday delivered a classic crypto gut punch. Over $60 billion vanished from the total market cap in a matter of hours. The scary part? It didn’t even take that much selling pressure to trigger the cascade.
Low weekend liquidity plus insanely stretched leverage created the perfect storm. Some traders were apparently running 100x-200x on perpetuals – because of course they were. One moderate move down and the dominoes started falling. CoinGlass clocked $444 million in liquidations in just 24 hours, with estimates for the full weekend wipeout ranging between $700 million and a full billion.
“When everyone is leveraged to the teeth, even a sneeze can trigger an avalanche.”
What Actually Happened Under the Hood
The mechanics were textbook, yet brutal. Bitcoin tested $90K support multiple times last week and finally cracked. Once it sliced through, stop-loss orders clustered just below $89K got eaten alive. That triggered margin calls on highly leveraged long positions, which forced more selling, which triggered more stops. Rinse and repeat down to $87,800.
Altcoins, as usual, amplified the pain. Ethereum dropped nearly 10% in a single candle at one point. Solana briefly touched the $120s. The mid-cap destruction was even worse – some names lost 20-30% before anyone could blink.
But here’s the thing that separates this dip from the real crashes we’ve survived before: spot demand never disappeared. Exchange balances kept dropping, whale wallets kept accumulating through the panic, and the moment selling pressure eased even slightly, buyers stepped in hard.
Monday Morning: Green Candles Everywhere
By Monday dawn in Asia, the mood had flipped. Bitcoin opened the week with a massive green candle and never looked back. As I write this, BTC sits comfortably above $91,500, Ethereum reclaimed $3,100, and even the battered alts are posting impressive bounces.
Some of the strongest performers today:
- Sui (SUI) – up over 8% and threatening new highs
- Bittensor (TAO) – climbing 7% as AI narrative heats up again
- Ethena (ENA) – leading the pack with a 10%+ surge
- Hyperliquid ecosystem tokens quietly outperforming
- Even meme coins showing life after getting absolutely crushed
The total market cap has already recovered most of the weekend losses, sitting back above $3.2 trillion. Open interest in futures actually increased slightly – a sign that new money came in to buy the dip rather than everyone running for the exits.
Why This Felt Scarier Than It Actually Was
I’ve been through enough cycles to recognize the difference between healthy cleansing and genuine trend reversal. This weekend had all the hallmarks of the former. Extreme leverage getting wiped out? Check. Fear & Greed Index plunging to 20? Check. Everyone suddenly becoming a macro expert on Twitter? Triple check.
Yet the underlying bid remained rock solid. Long-term holders barely touched their coins. ETF flows slowed but never went negative. The much-feared “retail capitulation” simply didn’t materialize because, frankly, retail has been sidelined for most of this rally anyway.
In my experience, these exact kinds of violent weekend shakes often mark local bottoms. They scare the tourists, wash out weak hands, and let the market climb the wall of worry with cleaner positioning.
The Leverage Reset Everyone Needed
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: leverage had become ridiculous again. Funding rates were pinned at extreme positives for weeks. Open interest hit all-time highs while price consolidated. Everyone and their dog was long with 50x+.
This correction did exactly what needed to happen – it forced the market to deleverage. Now funding rates are close to neutral, open interest has pulled back to healthier levels, and the average position size looks far more reasonable.
Think of it like pulling a rubber band. The further you stretch it, the more violent the snapback. We just released months of built-up tension in one weekend. Painful? Absolutely. Necessary? Without question.
What the Data Is Telling Us Right Now
The on-chain picture actually looks better than it did a week ago. Exchange reserves continue their steady decline. The percentage of Bitcoin supply in profit sits at levels that historically precede strong upward moves. Realized profit/loss ratios show more profit-taking than panic selling.
Even the derivatives market, usually the source of so much pain, is flashing bullish signals:
- Long/short ratio flipping back toward longs
- Basis trading desks rebuilding positions
- Perpetual funding rates normalizing
- Options skew showing demand for upside calls
Perhaps most interestingly, the CVD (cumulative volume delta) on major exchanges turned sharply positive during the recovery – meaning aggressive buying rather than short covering alone.
December: The Month That Could Make or Break 2025
Everyone keeps talking about “uptober” but let’s be real – December has historically been where the real magic happens in bull markets. With the leverage now cleaned out and positioning reset, the path of least resistance looks clearly higher.
Upcoming catalysts that could light the fuse:
- Federal Reserve decision on December 11th
- Potential continuation of pro-crypto policy shifts
- End-of-year portfolio rebalancing from institutions
- Traditional finance year-end window dressing
- Santa Claus rally psychology kicking in
The combination of cleaner charts, washed-out sentiment, and multiple positive catalysts lining up makes this feel different from the fake rallies we’ve seen during bear markets.
The Psychology of Surviving Crypto Winters (Even Mini Ones)
If you managed to hold through this weekend without panic selling, give yourself a pat on the back. You just survived what will probably be remembered as one of the last real tests before the next leg higher.
The traders who get wrecked are always the ones who can’t handle the psychological warfare. They see red candles and immediately imagine $50K Bitcoin again. Meanwhile, the people who understand cycle dynamics recognize these moments as opportunities.
I’ve found that the best approach is simple: zoom out, remember why you got into this space, and treat these shakeouts as the cost of admission for what comes next.
Where We Go From Here
The honest answer? Probably higher, and likely much faster than most expect now that the weak hands are gone. Bitcoin has a nasty habit of making the most people wrong at exactly the moment when pain is maximized and hope feels lost.
We’ve seen this movie before. The question is never whether the bull market is over after these kinds of corrections – it’s how much higher we go once the dust settles. And right now, all the dust appears to have settled.
The crypto market just proved, once again, that it remains the most brutal and beautiful financial arena on earth. It will shake you, scare you, and occasionally make you question your life choices. But if you can survive the weekends from hell, the weeks that follow often make it all worth it.
Welcome back to the upside. I have a feeling the best is yet to come.
