Amberdata Crypto Market Review 2025 and 2026 Outlook: Six Regimes, One Story [Report]

On October 10, 2025, $15.3 billion in Bitcoin positions were liquidated in 48 hours, the largest deleveraging event in crypto history. Order book depth collapsed 40% and hasn’t recovered. The carry trade compressed from 15% to 5%. Open interest fell 43% from peak. The stress test is complete. What matters now is understanding what it revealed.

 

This report segments 2025 into six market regimes because treating the year as a single market misses everything. The same Bitcoin delivered +21.5% in one regime and -20.4% in another. The same on-chain metrics that called every prior cycle top stayed silent. MVRV peaked at 2.52, well below the 3.5+ euphoria threshold. Either the model broke, or the cycle isn’t finished.

 

My conviction is bullish, but conviction without humility is dangerous. ETF holders sit on an aggregate cost basis near $80,000, creating institutional support absent in prior cycles. Whales and sharks accumulated over 120,000 BTC while retail capitulated. ETF flows now move 12x the daily mining supply, replacing the halving as the dominant price driver. Regulatory transformation has accelerated institutional adoption faster than anyone predicted. These are structural tailwinds, but uncertainty remains, and we acknowledge it.

 

None of this analysis would exist without the engineers and data teams at Amberdata. They work behind the scenes delivering institutional-grade coverage across 1,000+ centralized and decentralized exchanges, 500,000+ trading pairs, and 13+ years of historical data. This report is built on their work.

 

The market has changed. The frameworks for understanding it must change too. The 14 sections that follow explain why, and what comes next.