Gate Research Institute: Mainstream coins fluctuate at low levels | Options selling pressure continues to suppress BTC upward movement

Cryptocurrency Asset Panorama

BTC (-2.01% | Current price 88,558.7 USDT)

In the past 24 hours, BTC dropped from above $90,000 to a low of $87,581. The overall trend shows a weak downward movement, with short-term consolidation after technical oversold signals. MA5 < MA10 < MA30, a typical bearish alignment, indicating market sentiment remains weak; meanwhile, the price continues to stay below MA30, showing that both short-term and mid-term trends are dominated by bears. During the decline, trading volume did not significantly increase, implying sustained selling pressure rather than panic selling, but bullish buying has not yet noticeably appeared. Short-term traders can watch for support signals in the $87,500–$88,000 range; if $87,500 is effectively broken, the possibility of further decline to the $86,500–$86,000 range increases; mid-term holders are advised to wait for MA10 to turn upwards or for the daily chart to reclaim $90,000 before confirming a trend reversal.

ETH (-1.53% | Current price 3,079 USDT)

ETH’s overall movement is highly synchronized with BTC, currently in a low consolidation phase after a downtrend. Since December 13, ETH has been trading below MA30, indicating a weak mid-term trend; MA5 and MA10 have repeatedly formed death crosses, limiting short-term rebound momentum. Additionally, each rally to the $3,100–$3,120 range encounters selling pressure, indicating this zone as a strong short-term resistance. The volume characteristics are similar to BTC; there was no extreme volume spike during the decline, suggesting it is not panic selling but rather a slow decline caused by outflow of funds and declining volume. Key short-term support is at the $3,000 mark; if BTC subsequently moves higher, ETH may rebound accordingly.

GT (-0.57% | Current price 10.40 USDT)

GT performs slightly better than BTC and ETH, maintaining a sideways pattern with weak stability, showing signs of stabilization in the short term. Since December 13, GT has been fluctuating slightly around MA30 (10.41 USD); no significant volume-driven declines or surges have occurred. The market sentiment remains stable, with bulls and bears roughly balanced, and the short-term is forming a new consolidation zone. Overall, despite weakness in mainstream coins, support from Launchpool activities and other demand keeps GT relatively resilient; on the technical side, moving averages are converging tightly, and a direction is about to be chosen.

Daily Gainers and Losers Tokens

In the past 24 hours, the Fear Index remains at 16, indicating a state of extreme fear. Leading declines in BTC have dragged ETH, SOL, and others down; market sentiment is cooling, with funds temporarily flowing into stablecoins and defensive assets. In the short term, the market is primarily repairing and consolidating; unless BTC finds a firm bottom, a systemic rebound is unlikely.

FHE Mind Network (+95.2%, circulating market cap 19.83 million USD)

According to Gate data, the current price of FHE token is $0.07969, up over 90% in 24 hours. Mind Network (FHE) is a decentralized privacy protection infrastructure project based on fully homomorphic encryption technology, aiming to promote a fully encrypted internet through secure encrypted data and AI computation.

FHE has recently been very active. The current surge results from technical collaborations, ecological incentives, and narrative resonance, providing strong psychological support to the community. Firstly, Mind Network partnered with Chainlink to launch an innovative FHE privacy bridge, utilizing Chainlink CCIP combined with ZK and FHE technologies to enable encrypted cross-chain messaging. Secondly, Mind Network announced holding 1% Pippin tokens as a long-term strategic reserve and launched an FHE token lock-up airdrop incentive plan. Meanwhile, the project is advancing the promotion of encrypted AI infrastructure, further fueling FOMO sentiments.

ICE Ice Open Network (+46.08%, circulating market cap 17.34 million USD)

According to Gate data, ICE token is priced at $0.002495, up over 46% in 24 hours. Ice Open Network (ICE/ION) is a Layer-1 blockchain platform designed to reshape Web3 user and developer interactions through decentralized services. It focuses on user data sovereignty, privacy protection, and global digital connectivity, offering core functions such as digital identity verification, social media interaction, content distribution, and secure data storage. Highlights include an intuitive drag-and-drop dApp generator that allows even non-technical users to easily build dApps.

The main driver behind ICE’s rise appears to be the speculative frenzy triggered by the ICE <-> ION token migration. Users are required to migrate via the Online+ app to ION tokens (the new mainnet tokens). While this migration poses short-term liquidity risks, it also stimulates FOMO, with many traders purchasing ICE in advance to complete the migration or capitalize on price differences. Additionally, the migration marks the official transition to the ION mainnet, emphasizing zero-code dApps and privacy transactions, which enhances long-term narrative appeal.

BAS BNB Attestation Service (+48.02%, circulating market cap 23.82 million USD)

According to Gate data, BAS token is priced at $0.0092, up over 48% in 24 hours. BNB Attestation Service (BAS) is a native verification and reputation infrastructure layer within the BSC ecosystem, focused on building composable on-chain KYC (identity verification), asset proof, and reputation record systems. It integrates on-chain behaviors, social data, and community contributions, providing privacy-preserving zero-knowledge verification solutions applicable in RWA, DeFi, AI agents, and other scenarios.

The recent rise in BAS is driven by technical upgrades. The BAS team launched the ERC-8004 V1 protocol upgrade from December 12-14, introducing an AI Agent reputation tracking mechanism to enhance the intelligence of on-chain identity verification and increase demand for BAS tokens used to pay verification fees.

Hot Topics

The reason for the long-term difficulty in increasing BTC’s price is the presence of large sell pressure in the options market structure

Bitwise advisor Jeff Park believes that BTC’s current inability to break through significantly is not due to a lack of demand but is caused by market supply (especially large holders’ behavior) suppressing the rise. In particular, in the options market, a large amount of activity creates a “net delta sell structure,” constraining BTC’s upward momentum.

The above chart compares two different market “volatility skews”: IBIT (options for BTC ETF). Long-term, implied volatility of call options is higher than at-the-money → indicating the market is more optimistic about future rises and willing to pay higher premiums for “upside insurance”; native BTC options (such as BTC options on Deribit): implied volatility of calls is lower than ATM → showing the market is less willing to pay premiums for significant upward moves in the future. This difference indicates that the behaviors of two types of participants are completely different: ETF market favors buying calls, while the native BTC market favors selling calls, especially OG holders who profit from selling call options. This structural divergence results in a lack of strong upward price momentum.

Overall, OG holders and their hedging behaviors are suppressing Bitcoin’s upward movement, causing BTC to attract funds (e.g., ETF inflows) but still lack sufficient driving force for a substantial rally. Unless OG entities change their volatility selling behavior, Bitcoin may continue to oscillate without explosive upside; only new “buying forces” (such as increased bullish demand or reduced option selling pressure) can alter this structure.

Ant International leverages blockchain, AI, and tokenization to build enterprise treasury management platforms

Ant International’s treasury platform is a “三位一体” (trinity) “treasury stack,” comprising Whale + Bettr + AI (Falcon TST). Whale is a permissioned chain involving multiple banks, supporting bank-issued tokenized deposits, with key features including 24/7 real-time intra-group liquidity transfers, programmable rules (smart contracts) for automatic reconciliation, multi-currency settlement, and no traditional banking cut-off times; Bettr is a client-facing commercial brand offering real-time treasury management, settlement tokens (a wholesale tokenized electronic currency licensed under MiCA in the EU), embedded financial services mainly for airlines, e-commerce, cross-border trade, helping enterprises reduce costs and improve efficiency; Falcon TST is a time-series transformer model with nearly 2-2.5 billion parameters, trained on historical data, with forex and cash flow prediction accuracy over 90%, capable of lowering liquidity and FX-related costs.

In summary, the underlying industry trends include: Stablecoins and tokenized deposits becoming the infrastructure for institutional settlement, not only for crypto markets; AI financial prediction models beginning to replace traditional budgeting and hedging processes; blockchain evolving from a simple payment link to a core network for funds clearing and settlement.

Stable’s mainnet launch below expectations, on-chain activity remains subdued

Supported by sister company Tether, the stablecoin public chain Stable has been live for a week with fewer than 25,000 total addresses on-chain, far below market expectations. Meanwhile, the total token count on the Stable chain is only 339, with transaction fees in the last 24 hours less than 0.5 gUSDT. Stable has not experienced the typical rapid address expansion, interaction surge, or application-driven activity seen during initial new chain launches. Logically, the core issue facing Stable is not insufficient brand endorsement but that its differentiated narrative has yet to translate into perceivable on-chain demand. In the context of high-frequency stablecoin settlement networks like Ethereum, Solana, and Tron being relatively mature, relying solely on friendly stablecoin chains or Tether-related narratives is insufficient to drive large-scale migration by users and developers.

Furthermore, without clear native applications, payment/settlement advantages, or significant improvements in fees and efficiency, Stable is more likely to be viewed as a supplementary option within existing stablecoin infrastructure rather than an indispensable new mainnet. This partly explains the low on-chain activity during its initial launch. Future performance will depend on its ability to convert application deployment, funding incentives, or institutional cooperation into sustained on-chain usage, rather than remaining at the conceptual level.

References:

• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/BTC_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/btc/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/trade/ETH_USDT
• Farside Investors, https://farside.co.uk/eth/
• Gate, https://www.gate.com/crypto-market-data
• CoinGecko, https://www.coingecko.com/en/cryptocurrency-heatmap
• Jeff’s Substack, https://dgt10011.substack.com/p/the-one-chart-that-explains-why-bitcoin?r=4e7rq6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
• Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/sites/zennonkapron/2025/12/13/inside-ant-internationals-treasury-platform-how-whale-bettr-and-ai-are-rewiring-global-liquidity/

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