On Wednesday, bitcoin (BTC) briefly surpassed $100,000 for the fourth time, with trader sentiment shifting to greed from fear as the price fluctuates between $90,000 and the six-figure level.

The largest cryptocurrency can take several attempts to push through $100,000, as previous CoinDesk research showed.

Since reaching an all-time high of around $108,000 on December 17, bitcoin has posted a series of lower highs, just as it did during 2024’s seven-month consolidation.

However, the $90,000 price level remains firm. It has provided critical support and bitcoin has held above it since November 18th, except for briefly dipping below it on January 13th. The catalyst for a break in either direction could be President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

Monitoring leverage is also a key component in determining market euphoria or greed. This can be observed through futures open interest (OI).

Open interest refers to the total number of outstanding bitcoin futures contracts in the market. Data from Coinglass shows that OI has been at its lowest level since early November, when Donald Trump won the US election.

As the chart shows, open interest has fallen to 621,000 BTC ($61.6 billion) from 700,000 BTC on December 19. This means that recent price action has been less leverage driven and more spot driven.

For a fair analysis, it is important to compare open interest denominated in bitcoin, as the unit remains the same, rather than using nominal value, which fluctuates depending on the bitcoin price.