Decisive Recovery or Another Dead-Cat Bounce?

ETH also reclaimed the $3,000 level.

After a few consecutive days of little to no actual action, bitcoin’s price surged Monday morning to just over $90,000, where it faced some resistance.

This raises questions whether this latest rally is just another repeat of what has been transpiring for the past several weeks – breakout attempts to $90,000 followed by subsequent violent rejections and sideways action.

CW attributed today’s price revival to a favorable alignment of retail and whales who are simultaneously buying BTC. The analyst believes that retail returning is of particular interest as they have sat on the sidelines for a while, especially since the October crash.

Large whales and smart retail investors are simultaneously buying $BTC.

Of particular thing is the restart of retail investor’s buying.

Only smart investors remain in the market, meaning we’re nearing the start of a rally. pic.twitter.com/wiTPooxH4P

— CW (@CW8900) December 28, 2025

In a separate post, CW explained that almost all exchanges are showing strong BTC buying signals, especially Binance. They added that “whales who had been resting are back.”

Ali Martinez, though, recently published a different view on the matter. He believes the cryptocurrency is forming another dead-cat bounce before it “potentially makes another leg lower.”

He justified his rather bearish prediction with the lack of actual positive capital flows. Just the opposite; the net capital flow has turned negative, dropping below $-4.5 billion.

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“This means money is currently leaving crypto rather entering it,” he concluded.

The trend is similar to the spot BTC ETFs, which have been bleeding out for months. As reported recently, they went from almost $63 billion in net inflows in early October to well under $57 billion as of Friday’s close.

For now, though, BTC is 2.3% in the green daily, trading close to $90,000. Its Monday resurgence has awakened some altcoins, such as ETH, which jumped past $3,000. BNB is above $860, while XRP has touched the crucial $1.90 support.