Key Highlights
- 21, 2025 at 11:35 am UTC Share Cover art/illustration via CryptoSlate.
- Image includes combined content which may include AI-generated content.
- Bitcoin (BTC) walks to close 2025 with more than $112 billion locked in US spot ETFs, exchange reserves at a record low of 2.751 million BTC, and perpetual futures open interest of nearly $30 billion. Every single one of those data points would have sounded constructive in 2022.
- In late 2025, they map to the same outcome: price chopping between $81,000 and $93,000 while narratives stay bullish and volatility stays suppressed. The gap between what the numbers say and how the market trades defines structural stagnation.
- In this regime, liquidity exists but doesn't flow, where capital is large but fragmented, and where the plumbing can't translate headline demand into directional conviction. The tell came on Dec.
