Bitcoin Rally Fizzles as Token’s Record-Breaking Year Winds Down

A Bitcoin rally is fizzling in the final days of a record-breaking year for the digital asset, as investors assess the remaining impetus from President-elect Donald Trump’s embrace of the cryptocurrency sector.

The largest token changed hands at $94,673 as of 11:38 a.m. Friday in New York, partly paring a retreat of almost 3% from a day earlier. Smaller rivals including Ether and Dogecoin, a favorite of the meme crowd, oscillated in tight ranges.

Trump is pushing ahead with a promise to create a crypto-friendly environment in the US and has backed the idea of establishing a national Bitcoin reserve. Traders are banking some of the profits sparked by the Republican’s crypto cheerleading and are waiting to see if the mooted reserve is feasible.

Options Expiry

The crypto market is also braced for the expiry of a substantial quantity of Bitcoin and Ether options contracts on Friday — one of the biggest such events in the history of digital assets, according to prime broker FalconX.

The notional value of the Bitcoin contracts on the Deribit exchange — one of the largest for digital-asset derivatives — exceeds $14 billion, while the equivalent figure for Ether is about $3.8 billion.

Sean McNulty, director of trading at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets, flagged the risk of a “choppy market” amid the expiry of the derivatives positions.