This episode examines the December nineteenth Bank of Japan rate increase to zero percent and the corresponding bitcoin price movement from eighty-five thousand two hundred dollars to eighty-eight thousand dollars, driven by fresh leveraged long positions rather than carry trade unwinding. The analysis covers the structural withdrawal in altcoin derivatives markets, where Solana and XRP open interest declined despite flat spot prices, and the bifurcation between bitcoin’s positive funding environment and negative funding across altcoin futures. The episode also addresses ethereum’s one point five percent outperformance against bitcoin during a specific UTC window and the dependency of altcoin capital flows on bitcoin’s ability to consolidate above current resistance levels.
