(Bloomberg) — Bitcoin’s rally is losing steam in the final days of a record year for the digital asset, as investors assess the remaining momentum from President-elect Donald Trump’s embrace of the cryptocurrency sector.
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The largest token changed hands at $96,250 midday Friday in Singapore, partly paring a nearly 3% decline from the day before. Smaller rivals, including Ether and Dogecoin, a favorite of the meme crowd, were hovering in tight ranges.
Trump is moving forward with his promise to create a crypto-friendly environment in the United States and has supported the idea of establishing a national Bitcoin reserve. Traders are cashing in on some of the profits generated by the Republican’s cryptographic encouragement and waiting to see if the mentioned reserve is feasible.
Expiration of options
The crypto market is also bracing for the expiration of a significant amount of Bitcoin and Ether options contracts on Friday – one of the largest such events in digital asset history, according to prime broker FalconX.
The notional value of Bitcoin contracts on the Deribit exchange – one of the largest for digital asset derivatives – exceeds $14 billion, while the equivalent figure for Ether is around $3.8 billion .
Sean McNulty, director of trading at liquidity provider Arbelos Markets, flagged the risk of a “choppy market” amid the expiration of derivatives positions.
Microstrategy plan
Bitcoin is hesitant even after MicroStrategy Inc. signaled this week the possibility of expanding its token purchase program. The company has grown from a software maker to a Bitcoin accumulator and now owns over $40 billion in digital assets.
The original cryptocurrency is flirting with a decline for December, which would be its first monthly decline in four, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $108,316 on December 17 before retreating.
Investors withdrew a net $1.5 billion from a group of a dozen U.S. cash exchange-traded funds in the four trading days through Dec. 24, the largest outflow since Trump’s victory in the American elections on November 5.
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