TL;DR:
- Bitcoin’s rebound to $94,600 has flipped sentiment from fear to greed, with social data flashing FOMO signals that often precede local tops.
- Santiment and Matrixport’s Markus Thielen warn that rising retail optimism, weak ETF inflows and falling implied volatility point to rangebound trading, not a breakout.
- Coinbase offers a counterview, saying flushed leverage, lower open interest and cooler funding rates could potentially set the stage for a healthier Santa rally.
Bitcoin’s rebound to $94,600 has revived a familiar debate: is the latest surge a healthy trend continuation or a classic spike in retail FOMO that often precedes local tops and cooling phases. The asset jumped to a 3-week high on Tuesday amid a burst of bullish momentum, flipping sentiment from fear back to greed almost overnight as social feeds filled with price targets and calls for another leg higher into year-end.
📊Today’s #Matrixport Daily Chart – December 10, 2025 ⬇️
Volatility Fades, Catalysts Exhausted: Bitcoin Faces a Range-Bound December#Matrixport #Bitcoin #BTC #CryptoMarkets #BitcoinVolatility #BitcoinETF #FOMC pic.twitter.com/GaE8wRO798
— Matrixport Official (@Matrixport_EN) December 10, 2025
Retail euphoria vs volatility, ETF flows and leverage reset
On-chain and social analytics firm Santiment reports that crowd chatter on X, Reddit, Telegram and other platforms shows a pronounced rise in words like “higher” and “above,” which it associates with aggressive upside expectations. Historically, periods when retail suddenly turns bullish and calls for higher prices have lined up with flattening action or short-term Bitcoin corrections. By contrast, rising mentions of “lower” tend to appear when fear dominates and downside risk already feels priced in.
The current pattern, Santiment suggests, looks more like the former than the latter, raising the possibility that Bitcoin could be approaching a short-term top or a sideways consolidation zone. That interpretation is echoed by Matrixport analyst Markus Thielen, who argues that shrinking implied volatility and fading event catalysts make a powerful December breakout less likely than rangebound price action. With the Federal Open Market Committee meeting seen as the final major macro spark, options markets are increasingly pricing smaller swings.
🤑 Bitcoin enjoyed a much needed rebound back to $94.6K today, reinvigorating traders, causing them to FOMO back in and expect higher prices. According to our social data scraping X, Reddit, Telegram, & other data, calls for "higher" & "above" exploded.
🟦 High bars indicate… pic.twitter.com/o3U3yWkwkk
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) December 9, 2025
Thielen also flags muted demand from spot exchange-traded funds, noting that Bitcoin ETF inflows have not accelerated enough to sustain a fresh leg higher. In his view, a backdrop of weak ETF flows, falling implied volatility and retail-driven optimism favors a narrow trading range over a late-month melt-up. Absent a pickup in institutional buying or a surprise policy shock, he expects the remainder of December to feature more rotation within the crypto complex than dramatic new Bitcoin highs.
Not everyone reads the tea leaves so cautiously. Coinbase’s research desk argues that recent turbulence may have reset conditions for a potential Santa rally, pointing to a 16% month-over-month drop in open interest across Bitcoin and major altcoin perpetuals, significant outflows from U.S. spot ETFs and funding rates that briefly fell two standard deviations below their 90-day average as evidence that excess leverage has been flushed and that today’s structure is leaner, healthier and less fragile.
