Crypto Market Last Week: $1.42B ETF Inflows, $98,000 Bull Trap, Quick Reset to $92,000

by
Alyssa Davidson

Posted: January 20, 2026 5:05 AM Updated: January 20, 2026 5:05 AM

by well

Edit and fact check date: January 20, 2026, 5:05 a.m.

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Another week where Bitcoin tried to stop being boring… and immediately reminded everyone why chasing power on this tape is basically volunteering liquidity.

It’s very clean on the chart. We finally broke out of the ignominy of consolidation earlier this week, achieving a vertical squeeze and hitting a high just below $98,000. This is an “old high” area that the market continues to view as a selling wall. Once I was tagged, I didn’t see any follow-up. Prices did not collapse immediately either. It did that annoying thing where it hovered around the highs, split sideways near the mid-$95,000 range, and bought late, giving you plenty of time to be sure the breakout was “holding.”

Then the rug. Just before press time: A merciless downtrend took place right through the local range and brought us back to ~$92.6K at the big red candle. It was not a gentle retreat. This reads as if the market has discovered the biggest pain. The idea is to trap buyers above resistance, delay them, then sweep in stops and force de-risking all at once.

So what was the undercurrent driving this week’s movement?

First, the ETF flow story remained supportive on paper. Spot Bitcoin ETFs pulled in about $1.42 billion during their strongest week since early October. In healthy markets, these types of flows tend to act like bottoms. In other words, the decline is bought faster and the resistance line is eventually broken. Here it seemed like a “steady bid” while others were using force to sell. The point is not that influx is not important. The thing is that they are not magic wands when marginal trading is still leverage and short-term profit taking. Flows can prevent a market from collapsing and still not pass a known ceiling.

Second, U.S. policy headlines continued to inject a specific kind of uncertainty that traders dislike. Because it’s binary, slow, and political. The CLARITY Act drama, which includes the White House threatening to withdraw support after the Coinbase standoff and broader fights over tolerance for DeFi, tokenized stocks, and stablecoin rewards/yields, is not a single “bad news candle” impacting prices. This is considered a variable tax. This makes people quicker to fade rallies, take profits faster from resistance, and less willing to take risks over the weekend. Looking at the $98,000 action, you get the sense that no one wants to be the hero buyer of the policy headline tape.

Third, the security aspect has become noisy again. The $282 million socially engineered heist (reportedly via attackers impersonating Trezor support and tricking victims into revealing their seed phrases) isn’t going to change the fundamentals of Bitcoin, but it’s the kind of headline that completely alters the behavior of its periphery. This reminds everyone that “self-protection” is only as strong as the operational security of its users, and without smart contract exploitation, big money could still be lost through human compromise. In the short term, these stories tend to drive two opposing reactions simultaneously. Some people retreat to “safer” exposures (ETFs, regulated rails) while others eliminate risk altogether because it reminds them that this ecosystem is still bleeding in ugly ways. Either way, this doesn’t help you take the risk of chasing a breakout.

Put that together and this week makes sense. Spot demand (ETF) emerged and the price finally gained enough fuel to execute a stop and test the large $98,000 area, but the macro/regulatory mood and bullish selling habits in the market made this a bull trap. Once the momentum stopped, it didn’t take much to collapse the structure, and once it did, it happened quickly.

What now matters is whether this dump is just a “reset of leverage and leaving the higher lows intact” or the start of another leg moving back to the lower end of the range. In the near term, the market will need to claw back into the mid-$93,000s and then quickly into the mid-$94,000s to cushion the collapse. If not, you’ll have to look again at the previous supports. Around $92,000, then below $90,000, and ultimately the ~$89.5K area that has been serving as the “defensibly cheap” line in this whole chop regime. Once you’ve recovered $95.5K, it starts to look like the trap is swinging. Staying below that is another reminder that $98,000 is still where the rally will die.

As MPost’s resident journalist, Alisa specializes in the broad areas of cryptocurrencies, zero-knowledge proofs, investing, and Web3. With a keen eye for new trends and technologies, she provides comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers about the ever-evolving digital financial landscape.

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