Bitcoin price analysis: start of a XMas rally or a temporary top?

The largest digital currency has been trading around $90,000 for a week or so, refusing to break out either up or down. Is this the agonizingly slow start of a Christmas rally, or a temporary peak before another plunge to the bottom? At the same time, Bitcoin mining companies face a difficult choice: crypto or AI?

Federal Reserve

As always this year, it all depends on the Federal Reserve. They will decide on Wednesday whether to cut interest rates for a third time this year by another 25 basis points. That’s expected, but the Fed’s commentary is the main focus.

If it’s negative, I expect a further decline to $80,000, where support can be found. If the Fed decides the time is ripe for further rate cuts in early 2026, we can indeed expect the start of a new Christmas rally, although I still don’t see long term potential for this Bitcoin bull run to continue much longer.

Bitcoin miners

Now that the price of Bitcoin is falling and the price of AI is rising, some Bitcoin mining companies are asking themselves the question: will it soon be more profitable to mine Bitcoin, or to rent out your data center to an AI developer? Cleanspark, the major American Bitcoin mining company, made this choice earlier this year and sometimes rents out some of its data centers to tech companies in Silicon Valley. If the price of Bitcoin were to fall further next year, Mara Holdings and Riot (the largest American Bitcoin miners) could quickly decide to do the same.