Bitcoin price reclaims $90K on Fed rate cut bets, 2Z, ENA, LINK lead altcoins

Bitcoin continued recovering throughout the day and reclaimed its footing above $90,000 as fresh macro catalysts began to surface.

The total crypto market cap jumped nearly 4%, climbing back above the $3.2 trillion mark for the first time since late November.

A subtle uptick in demand helped fuel the broader rally across digital assets.

While overall sentiment remains cautious, there are signs of gradual improvement.

The crypto fear and greed index moved out of “extreme fear,” rising by five points in the past 24 hours to hit 28, still in “fear” territory.

Altcoins also edged higher, with most major tokens holding onto gains as of late Asian trading hours on Wednesday.

Why is Bitcoin price going up?

Bitcoin price climbed to an intraday high of $93,928 before retesting the $92k support area later in the day. 

Today’s gains were driven by a rally that began late Tuesday after a couple of macro headlines helped flip sentiment back in favour of risk.

Rate cut expectations are once again the leading narrative behind the market’s bounce, with traders now pricing in a 93% chance of a December cut, up from under 50% just a week ago. 

The shift came after ADP reported that private payrolls fell by 32,000 jobs in November, badly missing forecasts and marking the steepest drop since March 2023. 

With official October jobs data still unavailable due to the government shutdown, markets have been leaning heavily on private indicators like this to assess the economic picture ahead of the Fed’s next meeting.

The absence of official data means the Fed is essentially flying blind into its December decision, which makes softer numbers like ADP’s far more influential. 

The weaker report was widely seen as a sign of labour market deterioration, which in turn bolstered hopes that the Fed could pivot sooner than previously expected.

Adding to that, the central bank injected $13.5 billion into the banking system through overnight repos, its second-largest liquidity operation since the pandemic. 

The move was enough to trigger speculation that the Fed is beginning to quietly lay the groundwork for easing.

Meanwhile, a fresh regulatory tailwind emerged as SEC Chair Paul Atkins reportedly expressed optimism about crypto innovation and hinted at a new exemption framework for the industry, expected to roll out in January. 

The framework would allow crypto firms to test products without immediately facing enforcement action, giving developers more breathing room.

Adding to the momentum, Vanguard has started offering crypto ETFs and mutual funds to its 50 million retail clients, a move that’s likely to inject a new wave of demand into the market.

Traders appear to be positioning ahead of these potential shifts in monetary policy.

Bitcoin’s rebound comes alongside a surge in futures open interest, which rose 4.5% from Monday to over $130 billion, reflecting a fresh wave of leveraged bets. 

Overall liquidations fell over 30% pointing to a more controlled buildup of speculative positions.

Still, short sellers have taken the brunt of the hit. Over the past 24 hours, $466.99 million in positions were liquidated, $348.09 million of which came from shorts alone. 

Ethereum saw the most pain with $34.38 million in liquidations, followed by Bitcoin at $17.37 million.

The single-largest order was an $11.12 million BTC-USD position liquidated on Hyperliquid.

Bitcoin also managed to reclaim the key $90k support area, which is essential for any meaningful rally to continue building.

Will Bitcoin price go up?

Although the chance of the current move being a dead cat bounce can’t be fully ruled out, markets aren’t treating it like one, at least not yet.

Dead cat bounces are typically short-lived recoveries during extended downtrends, where prices briefly surge before continuing lower.

That scenario often unfolds without clear catalysts or conviction from buyers.

For now, there are still signs of bullish momentum building in the background.

Institutional demand, which has historically served as a leading signal in past rallies, is beginning to re-emerge in the form of quiet dip-buying from large players and fund managers. 

Treasury allocations are once again in play. Strategy Inc., for instance, added to its Bitcoin holdings last week as prices dropped to multi-month lows.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs just posted five consecutive days of inflows, pulling in over $288 million during that stretch. 

While those numbers fall short of the peaks seen during October’s all-time high run-up, they still reflect a healthy appetite for exposure and offer some reassurance to bulls that institutional engagement is picking back up.

If the current momentum holds and no fresh negative catalysts enter the mix, Bitcoin may be well positioned to capture the next key psychological level at $100,000. 

All eyes will remain on macroeconomic data and policy signals in the coming sessions, but for now, the market looks to be cautiously leaning back toward risk.

According to well-followed market analyst Rekt Capital, Bitcoin could break out of its weekly downtrend if it manages to breach the immediate resistance area parked at $93,500, which is being watched closely across trading circles.

“The rejections from the Range High resistance of ~$93500 have been getting weaker with each test. As long as this weakening continues, BTC should be able to finally breach this resistance over time & try to challenge the multi-week Downtrend above,” the analyst said in a Wednesday X post, alongside the chart below.

On the flipside, if bulls get rejected around $94k, Bitcoin could be looking at another visit to $88k, analyst Ted Pillows speculated in a separate X post from earlier today.

When writing, Bitcoin was hovering above $92,500 with gains of little over 2% on the 24-hour time frame.

Top altcoin gainers of the day

The total market cap of all altcoins combined initially rose from $1.43 trillion to $1.46 trillion before falling sharply later on the day to $1.36 trillion, down 5% over the past 24 hours.

At press time, the Altocin Season Index showed a reading of 22, indicating a relatively weak altcoin market in comparison to Bitcoin.

Ethereum (ETH) rose to an intraday high at a little over $3,100 before settling at $3,088 at the time of publishing.

Other large-cap altcoins such as BNB (BNB), Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE), and Cardano (ADA) held onto gains between 1-2%.

DoubleZero (2Z) led the gainers of the day, posting a 16.7% gain after Distributed Global, a major contributor of decentralised compute resources, added 400 Gbps of bandwidth to the DoubleZero network.

Ethena (ENA) and Chainlink (LINK) followed with gains of around 10% each, driven by fresh institutional interest.

ENA rallied after asset manager 21Shares launched a new Ethena ETP, while LINK benefited from the debut of the first Chainlink ETF from Grayscale.

Source: CoinMarketCap

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