Now That Bitcoin is Facing a Real Test, What’s The Next Big Thing?

Bitcoin USD slid to $93,029 over the weekend, erasing every inch of this year’s progress and dragging the market back to where it stood on January 1. Three cheers for Donald Trump, the “Crypto President!”

Meanwhile, it’s recently been found out that massive bitcoin developers like Jeremy Rubin were chatting with serial pedophile and political blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein. What the hell’s going on here?

Even Monday’s weak bounce into the mid-$95,000s did little to steady BTC; everything. This was not the year traders were promised.

Trump pledged a crypto-friendly renaissance, a national Bitcoin USD reserve, and, inevitably, corporations shoving BTC onto balance sheets. Instead, the landscape has been carved up by tariff fights, a 43-day government shutdown, and a series of violent pullbacks that have threatened a MicroStrategy death spiral.

So what’s next for Bitcoin USD?

Bitcoin USD Whale Selling Meets Macro Headwinds, What’s Next?

99Bitcoins analysts have pointed to heavy profit-taking from early Bitcoin holders as another drag on momentum. According to analysis from Capriole Investments, activity from wallets untouched for more than seven years, with several transfers in the $100 Mn to $500 Mn range coming out of pre-2018 addresses.

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The pattern spooked traders who took the moves as proof that early holders were cashing out.

🚨 BREAKING 🚨

A whale is shorting $BTC right now.

Position Size: $143.6 Million
Liquidation Price: $98,347 pic.twitter.com/GHu7ruq3fB

— Max Crypto (@MaxCrypto) November 15, 2025

Altcoins are even deeper in the red. Ethereum and Solana are down 7.9 percent and 28.3 percent, respectively, since the start of the year.

A look across major data dashboards paints the same picture:

• CoinGecko: BTC down 25 percent from ATH
• Glassnode: Long-term holder distribution rising, but within historical norms
• FRED: 10-year yields remain elevated, pressuring risk assets
• Crypto Fear & Greed Index: Back in extreme fear territory

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Are We Getting a 2026 Boom or Not?

Despite the turmoil, institutional flows into spot Bitcoin ETFs remain positive on a monthly basis, signaling that traditional investors haven’t abandoned the Q4/2026 bull market thesis.

The biggest debate now is whether the four-year Bitcoin cycle still applies in a world of ETFs, corporate treasuries, and regulatory clarity. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan thinks the answer is yes yet shifted forward.

“I think the underlying fundamentals are just so sound,” Hougan said. “Stablecoins, tokenization, institutional investment… those forces are too big to keep down.”

Hougan believes the real breakout begins in 2026, not 2025 because the expected late-2025 rally never materialized.

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Meanwhile, Zcash Breaks From the Top Rope: Is ZEC The Best Q4 Altcoin?

While Bitcoin was bleeding,

Dogecoin
DOGE

$0.1626


1.73%

Zcash
ZEC

$677.75


4.01%

was one of the only assets climbing. ZEC is up 21 percent in the past week and remains one of the best-performing coins of 2025, helped by the Winklevoss-backed Cypherpunk Technologies beginning to aggressively accumulate supply.

ZEC has a lot of things going for it and looks to be one of the standout altcoins in Q4:

• Minor resistance: $688
• Critical breakout level: $748

A daily close above $748 sends Zcash toward $1,010, then $1,332, matching Fibonacci extensions and its three-month trend, up more than 250 percent.

Bitcoin will come back. But the irrationality among altcoins has finally caught up and that’s why this market is failing.

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