The crypto market continued to remain lacklustre on Thursday, December 18 with most assets trading in losses. Bitcoin on Thursday reflected a loss of over one percent. The most expensive asset was trading at $86,360 at the time of writing – with its seven-day price range reflecting a dip of 6.20 percent. The asset price has been fluctuating rapidly for days now.
Market analysts, in conversation with Coin Headlines said, the U.S. CPI inflation and jobless claims data slated for release later on Thursday will decide the next move for Bitcoin. A daily close above $89,000, analysts say, could make way for a sustained rally towards $92,000 for BTC with major support standing at $84,000.
“The crypto market witnessed sharp price swings during the U.S. market open, with Bitcoin briefly surging to $90,300 before pulling back to the $86,000 zone within an hour. On-chain and derivatives data suggest the move was amplified by thin liquidity, triggering a leverage reset. Around $120 million in short positions were liquidated on the way up, followed by over $200 million in long liquidations during the pullback,” said Akshat Siddhant, Lead Quant Analyst, Mudrex.
Ether has also stayed under $3,000 for over a week. The asset registered a loss of 3.70 percent over the last day. With this, the value of the asset dropped to $2,825 on Thursday.
Along with ETH, BNB and XRP also logged losses within the range of three to four percent to trade at $832 and $1.83 respectively. Other altcoins trading in the losses include Solana, Dogecoin, Cardano, Bitcoin Cash, Chainlink, Hyperliquid, and Stellar among others.
Meanwhile, Zcash and Monero managed to rope-in small gains of under one percent. Notably, despite the market slowdown, Monero’s seven-day price trajectory shows a profit of 6.17 percent.
“Cryptocurrency markets are under pressure today with nearly 75 percent of the top 100 coins trading below key moving averages reflecting fading momentum. The broader market remains weak. The downturn is driven by global risk-off sentiment, thin year-end liquidity, and growing regulatory uncertainty. A key trigger was the US Senate Banking Committee’s decision to delay discussions on the long-awaited crypto market structure bill until early 2026, dampening investor confidence,” Sathvik Vishwanath, the co-founder and CEO, Unocoin told Coin Headlines.
Analysts say that the emerging death cross patterns across major tokens signal bearish bias, frustrating traders despite recent positive catalysts. A death cross occurs when short-term moving averages (typically the 50-day) drops below long-term moving averages (the 200-day). This often forecasts a strong market correction period.
A total of 158,325 investors were liquidated over the last day with the total liquidations hitting $544.29 million, data by CoinGlass showed. The overall crypto market cap stands at $2.91 trillion after clocking a loss of 1.20 percent over the last day.