Bitcoin climbed over 1% during Monday’s Asian trading session, positioning itself for a five-day winning streak, its longest since early October.
The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization jumped from around $91,480 to $92,500, CoinDesk data shows. At one point, prices topped $93,000. Major alternative cryptocurrencies such as solana and ether jumped 0.7% to 1%. The CoinDesk 20 and CoinDesk 80 indexes rose 1.5%, pointing to broader market cheer.
“Market sentiment is improving, with both Bitcoin and Ethereum moving into bullish trend regimes,” Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, recently named the top crypto analyst, said in a Telegram message to CoinDesk.
“We became constructive after the expiration of the options in late December, anticipating that tax loss selling would slow down and that trading desks would regain the flexibility to implement risk in the new year,” Thielen added.
Bitcoin and the broader crypto market remained mostly depressed through December as US-based holders reportedly liquidated their holdings at a loss to offset capital gains and reduce overall tax liability. Investors intentionally realize losses on underperforming assets to lower the tax owed on profitable sales.
Bitcoin underperformed the Nasdaq, gold and other precious metals through 2025, ending the year with a 6% loss. The development was particularly weak in the North American trading hours in the last weeks of the year.
Bitcoin’s recent surge coincides with renewed geopolitical stress from the US capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. This increase is increasingly seen as a sign that cryptocurrencies are attracting safe demand.
“We view the simultaneous rise across multiple asset classes following US military action in Venezuela as a textbook flight to quality. Safe havens like gold and silver are rising sharply as investors price in elevated geopolitical risk that could continue or escalate,” Ryan Lee, chief analyst at cryptocurrency exchange Bitget, said in an email.
“Oil is so far relatively contained around the $60 per barrel level, which helps contain immediate inflationary pressures, but markets are clearly discounting the risk of future energy disruptions and tighter liquidity conditions that could force the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates higher for longer,” Lee added.
Looking ahead, the bias remains bullish while BTC’s price remains above the 21-day exponential moving average, according to Thielen.
“Early ETF inflows have been encouraging, and as long as Bitcoin stays above its 21-day moving average, the short-term bias remains skewed to the upside,” Thielen said.
The 11 bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) pulled in more than $471 million on Friday, the biggest single-day tally since Nov. 11, according to data source SoSoValue.
