Blue-chip cryptocurrencies fall prey to volatile macros and profit booking by large institutions

The Bitcoin price fell from $115,699.2 on September 20, 2025 to $91,835.5 on November 20, a decline of 21 percent. | Photo credit: REUTERS

The BTC price fell from $115,699.2 on September 20, 2025 to $91,835.5 on November 20 at 6:30 PM IST, a decline of 21 percent. ETH fell from $4,480.41 to $3,028.86 over the same period, a drop of 32 percent. BTC hit its all-time high of $126,198.07 last month, while ETH hit an all-time high of $4,953.73 in August, according to investment.com and Coinmarket Cap.

Sumit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of CoinDCX, said both BTC and ETH have experienced increased volatility over the past month, mainly due to macro-driven liquidity shifts and profit booking by short-term market participants. Bitcoin fell below the $90,000 mark for the first time since April, impacted by the US-China trade war, tighter global liquidity, uncertainty around US fiscal conditions and rapid unwinding of positions by indebted traders.

“At the same time, broader market sentiment is fluctuating as investors reassess risky assets amid mixed inflation signals and shifting expectations around interest rate policy. Even blue-chip tokens are not insulated from these forces. However, it is important to note that the structural fundamentals for BTC and ETH remain intact,” he said.

Crypto outflows

He added that recent ETF flow data shows that spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen about $2.59 billion in outflows this month, with BlackRock’s IBIT recording outflows of about $1.26 billion and Fidelity’s FBTC about $540 million. These outflows indicate a repositioning of investors, says Gupta, but they should not be interpreted as a strategic exit by large institutions.

According to Vikas Gupta, Country Manager at Bybit India, while some of the recent decline appears to have been driven by profit booking rather than a meaningful exit from long-term institutional investors, BTC’s breach of key technical support levels has intensified the market reaction, leading to automated liquidations and leading to steeper price swings. The trendline support in the $95,000-$100,000 range also appears to have been broken, leading to heavy liquidations and reducing stability at current levels.

“Recent on-chain data indicates notable outflows from BTC and ETH portfolios managed by major institutions, and this is also visible in the redemptions of ETFs led by major issuers like BlackRock and Fidelity. As a result, this has raised questions about whether major financial institutions are actually reducing their exposure to crypto assets. However, these outflows appear to be driven by short-term profit-taking and regular portfolio rebalancing, rather than through a long-term exit from the crypto space,” he said.

Outlook

Aishwary Gupta, Global Head of Payments at Polygon Labs, said BTC is technically still in a post-halving cyclical uptrend, but this time with much more institutional flow. As long as it maintains its upper-low structure on the weekly chart, the broader bull cycle remains intact, even with deep corrections. The most important levels to watch are the previous cycle highs as support zones, and the ETF-driven “price discovery” area as resistance areas. If this supports macro volatility, BTC will continue to behave as a high-beta digital macro asset over the 2025-2026 period.

For ETH, says Gupta, the technicals intersect more directly with the fundamentals: on-chain, ETH is gradually turning into infrastructure/“tech equity” plus collateral for rollups, DeFi and redraws. Structurally, this supports a longer-term uptrend, even if it underperforms BTC in phases.

“From a chart perspective, the most important thing is whether ETH can maintain a multi-year pattern of higher highs and higher lows against both USD and BTC. If so, 2025-2026 looks like a consolidation-plus-accumulation phase where ETH acts as a growth asset leveraged into the broader crypto/app chain cycle,” he said.

Published on November 20, 2025