Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Stuck in Post-Fed Range as Altcoins Slump Deepens

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Crypto Markets Today: Bitcoin Stuck in Post-Fed Range as Altcoins Slump Deepens Bitcoin remains trapped in a range despite the U.S. rate cut, while altcoins and memecoins struggle to attract risk appetite amid shifting investor behavior. By Oliver Knight , Omkar Godbole | Edited by Sheldon Reback Dec 12, 2025, 11:30 a.m. Bitcoin remains stuck in a range despite the Fed rate cut (Sebastian Huxley/Unsplash) What to know : BTC briefly dipped below $90,000 after Wednesday's 25 basis-point U.S. rate cut before rebounding, but price action lacked a clear fundamental catalyst. Tokens such as JUP, KAS and QNT posted double-digit weekly losses, while CoinMarketCap’s altcoin season index fell to a cycle low of 16/100. CoinDesk’s Memecoin Index is down 59% year-to-date versus a 7.3% decline in the CD10, highlighting a shift from retail-driven hype to more institutionally led, slower-moving markets. The crypto market remained choppy on Friday with bitcoin BTC $ 92,398.17 having spent the past seven days pinned between $88,000 and $94,000 in a week dominated by the Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points. Interest-rate reductions are typically seen as bullish catalysts for risk assets like bitcoin as investors are less incentivized to hold fiat currencies like the dollar, thus searching for returns elsewhere. STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . But neither bitcoin nor the broader crypto market behaved as expected, with BTC tumbling to below $90,000 after the cut before rising back to the upper side of the range. The CoinDesk 20 Index is up 0.57% since midnight UTC. The altcoin market remains relatively weak as several tokens including JUP $ 0.2129 , KAS $ 0.04674 and QNT $ 81.63 have faced double-digit declines this week. Derivatives positioning BTC's 30-day implied volatility, represented by Volmex's BVIV index, continues to decline, falling to its lowest since Nov. 10. Traders seem to be anticipating choppy price action in final weeks of 2025. The ether volatility index has dropped to the lowest since late October. On Deribit, BTC and ETH put bias remains intact across all time frames. Block flows featured a bias for calendar spreads in BTC and ETH. In futures market, ZEC's open interest (OI) has surged by 16% to 2.28 million ZEC, nearing the record high of 2.32 million ZEC. HYPE, SUI and SOL have also seen notable increases in OI over 24 hours, indicating renewed capital inflows. OI has held largely flat in BTC and ETH. Token talk Privacy coins continue to be the top performers of the altcoin market as zcash ZEC $ 453.74 led the way with a 9% gain over the past 24 hours. There were also notable intraday recoveries for AAVE, HYPE and LIDO, but performance over the past week remains muted. CoinMarketCap's "altcoin season" indicator is now at a cycle low of 16/100, a sign that traders are declining to turn to the speculative altcoin market. The chronic underperformance is demonstrated by CoinDesk's Memecoin Index (CDMEME), which is down by 59% year-to-date in contrast to the CoinDesk 10 (CD10, which has lost 7.3%. The demise of the memecoin market, once the bedrock of hype-driven crypto speculation, indicates a change in investor profile behavior over the past year. While the market used to be dominated by retail investors, the rise of ETFs and digital asset treasury (DAT) companies has knocked that demand to one side; replacing it with slow and steady price action. Crypto Markets Today Derivatives Markets More For You Protocol Research: GoPlus Security By CoinDesk Research Nov 14, 2025 Commissioned by GoPlus What to know : As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M. GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month. Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B. View Full Report More For You From Lockstep to Lag, Bitcoin Poised to Catch Up With Small Cap Highs By James Van Straten | Edited by Sheldon Reback 40 minutes ago The Federal Reserve begins Treasury bill purchases later Friday, starting with $8.2 billion as part of its reserve management program. What to know : The Russell 2000 index has pushed to new all time highs alongside strength across U.S. equities and metals, while bitcoin remains 27% below its peak, marking a rare divergence after years of moving in sync. With small-cap stocks highly sensitive to falling interest rates and 2026 earning-per-share growth expectations near 49%, according to Goldman Sachs, improving macroeconomic conditions could realign bitcoin and crypto with small-cap strength. The Federal Reserve starts Treasury bill purchases today with an initial $8.2 billion operation, the first step in a $40 billion reserve management program running until April. 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