Stuck In the Middle With You

For weeks, I've been shouting into the void about the massive $BTC options open interest. We finally saw some green candles on the 2nd, but that $90k-$91k wall is currently held together with industrial-strength spite.

Happy 17th birthday to Bitcoin!

For weeks, I've been shouting into the void about the massive $BTC options open interest. We finally saw some green candles on the 2nd, but that $90k–$91k wall is currently held together with industrial-strength spite. It's firmly intact, keeping the price trapped in a range that is getting tighter by the hour.

Here is why that's actually a good thing: The longer this "compression" lasts, the more violent the eventual breakout will be. When the price finally snaps upward, those shorts are going to be forced into a panic-buying spree that could easily rocket us back past $100k. This coiled spring that's about to lose its mind.

The $91k Meat Grinder

If the $91k level feels like a solid brick wall, that's because, for leveraged traders, it basically is. The current liquidation heatmap is glowing like a neon sign, showing a massive cluster of short positions stacked between $91,000 and $96,400.

Right now, the market is playing a high-stakes game of "Stop Hitting Yourself":

• The Trap: Every time Bitcoin sneaks toward $90,500, exchanges and market makers give it a polite shove back down. Why? Because there is roughly $100M+ in short liquidity sitting just above $91k that hasn't been "harvested" yet.

• The Squeeze: If we get a daily close above $91,600 (where the 50-day EMA is currently looming like a disappointed parent), those shorts won't just close, they will combust. A break past this level triggers a "forced buying" cascade.

• The Floor: On the flip side, if the bulls lose interest, there's a dense thicket of long liquidations waiting at $88,000 and $84,500 to catch any falling knives.

Anti-crypto SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw has officially pulled an *NSYNC and said Bye-Bye-Bye. As one of the most vocal critics of the space, her departure marks the end of an era of aggressive "oversight."

The SEC is now officially a pro-crypto Republican featuring Paul Atkins, Hester Peirce, and Mark Uyeda. For the first time in a long time, the regulatory "adults in the room" might actually like the asset class they're supposed to be governing.

Price Movements on the Week

• $BTC - Up 3.69%
• $SOL - Up 7.86%
• $ETH - Up 6.46%
• $ZEC - Down 4.26%
• $HYPE - Down 0.4%
• $BNB - Up 3.38%
• Total Crypto Market Cap - Up 4.5% (back above 3 trillion)

Lots of talk this week about @Base and their approach, with @brian_armstrong openly engaging with people on the timeline and even talking to @notthreadguy who posted his take on the creator coin approach Base has been leaning into really hard.

The tweet stated: "i will never buy another creator coin"

In my opinion, Brian feels in his gut that this is not the way to really onboard people and is looking for feedback. If you've used the new version of the Base app, it's a bit of a clusterfuck. The landing screen is some form/tie in of Zora on a Trade tab, and then there's a talk tab that is farcaster? Where is the crypto you may be asking? It's hidden more. For a better experience, turn off Base mode.

Jupiter (@JupiterExchange) announced v3 of their mobile wallet. They revamped the discovery, token analysis, and trading UX into a full-blown pro trading experience. The PnL analysis is really nice to see and can go between all time, 24hr, 7 day and last month views. The downside is we've been red for a while, so it may not be the most exciting view at the moment.

Hush (@hush_wallet) dropped a really nice feature, adding the ability to create and manage unique wallets for each dApp and defi, allowing private dApp wallet connections. Hush is a newer wallet and I haven't had time to play around with it yet personally, but I do plan to send some SOL there and check it out and see how it flows and the potential added costs (if any for shielding into pools and transfer, etc). Hush says their wallet includes:

• Magic wallet management: We create, manage and delete wallets behind the scenes to break onchain links
• Private dApp connections: Create new wallets specifically for connecting to dApps to prevent IP-wallet connections
• Auto-shielding SOL: All SOL that flows through Hush is put in a private pool with other users funds to hide your trace (in collaboration with PrivacyCash)
• Private Swapping: Swap exclusively using shielded funds
• ZCash bridging: Natively convert shielded SOL to ZEC using NEAR intents
• Proxy routing: All API calls to third party services like RPCs, Jupiter and NEAR are routed through our proxy to prevent IP leakage

Less than two months after announcing they'd do daily open-market buybacks of HNT tokens, Helium has already decided—nah, we are doing that anymore. Amir (@amirhaleem) said the market doesn't seem to care about token buybacks, so the foundation is stopping the practice under current conditions. The decision to shift from a burn to a buyback was done by the team and foundation, not a DAO vote.

In response, SIONG (@sssionggg) from @JupiterExchange has also asked the community about the buyback mechanism for $JUP and how to approach it. JUP has taken some hard hits this year, down from $1.15 to around $0.20 where it currently sits. The buybacks the team has been doing and burns have not moved the needle or given people a reason to want to hold the token. Does it need more time like Binance does with $BNB, a better rev sharing mechanism or a complete overhaul?

A huge flag is the unlocks vs the buyback amounts. Employees are both paid in JUP and have unlocks. It's no reason the buyback doesn't help much.

• Buybacks = $70 Million
• Unlocks = $1.2 Billion

The timing of when the token started to bomb correlates pretty closely to when Jupiter halted all voting after community backlash. What's my JUP been doing since then? Absolutely nothing. Even that utility of feeling involved was removed after a series of mostly pointless votes. One thing is clear. Jupiter ships like no other, but their token doesn't reflect it at all.

SOL ETFs have continued to perform well. It was a short week because of the holidays, but SOL has been outperforming BTC/ETH combined in weekly inflows with another $10-11 million added this week.

Orca (@orca_so) introduced presets to your ranges. They added Price History presets that pull real-time data (1H to 7D) to align your liquidity with actual market movement and the ability to toggle between ±1%, ±5%, or ±10% around the spot price. I use Orca personally and have typically done full range on projects that I'm ok having impermanent losses on, but want to claim more tokens from trading vs tighter ranges.

Lighter (@Lighter_xyz) had their TGE this week ($LIT - Down 24%) and saw $250,000,000 in withdrawals on the first day. Are the farmers leaving to go to the next opportunity, going back to Hyperliquid, etc? After the success of $HYPE, any perps dex is going to be purely mercenary capital through TGE. @bubblemaps compared perps TVL post-TGE (+ 72 hours):

• Aster: +95%
• Hype: +25%
• dYdX: +6%
• Lighter: -9%

Another perps dex on Solana, Ranger (@ranger_finance) will be doing their ICO on Jan 6th. Ranger will run a 4-day @MetaDAOProject ICO with the following parameters:

• Minimum raise: $6,000,000
• ICO pool: 10,000,000 RNGR (39.02% of total supply)
• Monthly team allowance from treasury: $250,000
• Sale window: 6 Jan 2026, 16:00 UTC → 10 Jan 2026, 16:00 UTC

During the sale window, participants can commit capital. At the end of the 4 days, the Ranger team will choose how much capital to accept from the total amount committed.

Cypherpunk (@cypherpunk) accumulated an additional 56,418 $ZEC for $29 million. They now ZODL ~1.76% of the network. The stock ticker is $CYPH, has struggled lately and is around $1.13 a share ($0.91 30 day low/ high of $1.65)

Ore (@OREsupply) has partnered up with Privacy Cash (@theprivacycash) to create a shielded pool for $ORE and you can access the pool at ore.supply/shield for private transfers. If you are unfamiliar with Ore, they are taking the mined/bitcoin approach on Solana. They got a lot of attention a few months ago on Seeker, with people building auto miners. The price peaked at $1000 in Aug 24, then dropped to $30 in December and had another run back to $485 this November (currently $99). Are they the BTC of Solana? It's had a few strong runs, but violent retraces the moment attention fades again.

Business as usual over on @Polymarket. A newly created Polymarket account invested over $30,000 yesterday in Maduro's exit. The US then took Maduro into custody overnight, and the trader profited $400,000 in less than 24 hours. Insider information truly pays.

According to The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter), @Solana onchain spot volume officially overtook all offchain exchanges except Binance in 2025, at $1.6 trillion in 2025, beating out Bybit, Coinbase Global, and Bitget in total volume. Binance is still the monster though with 4.5x the volume at 7.2 trillion (55% vs 80% since 2022) vs 1.6 trillion on Solana.

Infinex (@infinex) opened up their token sale registration through the 9th (infinex.xyz/sale).

Thanks for reading,

Stay Free

• Ebullition