Bitunix analysts commented that the market is entering a composite phase of “macroeconomic turning-point expectations plus internal capital rotation within crypto.” This is against the backdrop of weakening employment and rising rate-cut expectations.

Also, ETF flows and liquidation structures suggest a divergence in risk appetite, not a synchronized expansion.

“In the short term, the market remains in a structurally volatile, range-bound regime,” the analysts say. “Going forward, close attention should be paid to whether rate expectations are revised further downward and whether capital continues to rotate from Bitcoin into higher-beta assets, as these factors will determine the risk level and trend slope of the next phase of the market.”

Meanwhile, Alexis Sirkia, Chairman of Yellow Network, argues that “the market’s current late-cycle fragility is not a pricing problem, but an architectural one.”

The trustlessness that drove initial innovation in Web3 is now lost amidst systems that burden themselves with on-chain settlement of every micro-transaction, the Chairman says. “This is why the entire asset class still remains tethered to the movements in Big Tech and equity markets.”

Moreover, real decoupling of crypto from TradFi will be driven by increased operational efficiency and by ETF inflows, be it for BTC or the emerging XRP products.

“We are witnessing the final phases of the Layer 1 and Layer 2 scaling debate,” Sirkia says. “The future requires a high-performance Layer 3, that operates off-chain, delivering the millions of transactions per second required for real-world utility.”

Additionally, the next step for DeFi is a new utility layer, not a new asset class. “The projects and tokens that transition to high-throughput, low-friction architecture will revive the industry, and propel it to greater heights.”

At the time of writing on Thursday morning, BTC stood at $93,351. It was quite a choppy trading day for the coin, overall moving between $91,958 and $94,000.

It has also increased by 2.3% over the past week, trading in the $84,553–$93,855 range.

Moving above $96,000 would leave the door open for the price to surpass $100,000 and $112,000. On the other hand, a drop below $90,000 may lead to another drop to the $80,000 level.