The end-of-year crypto market is like a cup of lukewarm water — it looks warm, but drinking it tastes bland. This analogy couldn’t be more fitting for Bitcoin right now.

In the past two days, BTC has been bouncing around near 87,500, briefly dropping to 86,375 last night before rebounding, reaching a high of 88,017, then turning back down to the 87,600 range. Isn’t this a typical holiday market? Liquidity has shrunk by over 40%, major institutions are either on holiday or locking in their positions, leaving retail traders to chop each other up.

Let’s look at the technical situation. The 4-hour Bollinger Bands are already squeezed tightly, with the upper band at 87,612 and the lower at 87,376, leaving only about a hundred points of space in between. I’ve seen this kind of extreme contraction before — just before Christmas last year, BTC was stuck around 40,000 and was similarly squeezed. Usually, at this critical point, there are only two choices: break upward through the ceiling or find support downward.

Now, consider some key data. This week, the US spot Bitcoin ETF saw a net outflow of $500 million, with a total outflow of $4.3 billion over two months. This is a true reflection of the market’s sluggishness. But there’s an interesting detail — institutions haven’t completely sold off. Harvard’s endowment still holds $443 million in IBIT as its largest holding, and Avenir Group in Hong Kong hasn’t moved its $691 million Bitcoin position.

This signals one thing: institutions are reducing their holdings, but not liquidating entirely. Their logic is clear — scaling down but maintaining confidence. This is very different from the previous large-scale sell-offs.