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When will bitcoin break $100,000 again?

Bitcoin is having a strong start to 2026 that could see it catch up with precious metals’ rally. Bitcoin ETFs are also rallying, and saw their second consecutive day of massive inflows, recording $843.6 million on Wednesday, according to SoSoValue, bringing the total for the week to $1.7 billion.

Jake Kennis, research analyst at Nansen, told Sherwood News that a combination of easing inflation fears, geopolitical safe haven demand, stronger ETF inflows, and a technical breakout above $94,000 to $96,000 resistance are all converging to push BTC toward $100,000.

“The rally has solid institutional and onchain backing, but elevated leverage in futures markets and profit-taking by top traders near the $97K–$100K psychological resistance could trigger volatility,” Kennis said.

While bitcoin has retreated after nearing key resistance levels, Timot Lamarre, director of market research at Unchained, said that despite the asset having been well off all-time highs, it is set up for a sustainable run above $100,000.

“Institutions continue to open up bitcoin buying opportunities to new pools of capital, the macro environment continues to move toward significant monetary easing, and governments, companies, and individuals continue to increase their bitcoin stockpiles,” he said.

The analytics team at B2BINPAY echoed the sentiment, saying that the market structure remains bullish, “with potential to reach $100–105K in the coming weeks, potentially reaching the $120K–140K range later in 2026 if demand stays in place.” 

A failure would likely mean a pullback to the $88,000 to $90,000 range, where liquidity is already concentrated, they said.

“Another crucial marker is leverage. Funding rates and open interest are far from extreme, with total OI at around $65B. That’s high. Yet, it’s still below the prior record/near-record zone seen in 2025, around $72B–$75B. So the market isn’t stretched,” the analysts said.

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Crypto market snaps back as sentiment lifts, with altcoins from ethereum to XRP soaring

The market capitalization of the crypto industry has jumped around $83.2 billion in the last 24 hours, with privacy-focused token Zcash and worldcoin, the native cryptocurrency of the network backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, leading market gains, jumping over 22%.

But the last 24 hours have been good across the board:

Investors have been eager to see some positive signs around the Iranian conflict ending, coupled with hopeful outlooks around the CLARITY act, both breathing some life into assets, Kairos Research cofounder Ian Unsworth told Sherwood News.

Simon Shockey, a crypto strategist at crypto wallet infrastructure firm Privy, said the upswing stems from several things converging. He pointed to how alt markets broadly were very oversold following the bug found in Zcash that shook confidence.

Friday, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said Anthropic didn’t find any more serious bugs with the Zcash protocol after Shielded Labs requested the AI firm run a security audit of the network with Mythos.

Shockey added that the pool of willing sellers has dwindled. Even if structurally, AI is a much more compelling and asymmetric bet in the eyes of allocators, many of these crypto assets have simply run out of marginal sellers despite some shorter-term narrative-driven pumps. The only people left to sell at this point are the teams themselves and VCs.

Net-net: oversold conditions plus exhausted seller bases plus a macro backdrop thats stabilized equals a snapback, especially in names that have real usage or community conviction behind them,” Shockey told Sherwood.

$389M

US Attorney David Metcalf announced Thursday the arrests of Ruslan Igorevich Tkachuk and Alexander Vladimirovich Ledenev, alleged senior members of AudiA6, a cryptocurrency money-laundering service believed to be responsible for laundering over $389 million.

The arrests coincided with a coordinated international takedown of AudiA6 and its infrastructure, involving the search of three properties, the seizure of servers and domains connected to the organization, as well as freezing cryptocurrency assets, according to a Department of Justice press release.

Tkachuk and Ledenev were “charged by criminal complaint with one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments and one count of sting money laundering,” the DOJ said. If convicted, they face a maximum possible sentence of 20 years of incarceration.

Per the criminal complaint, AudiA6 offered services to conceal the origin of cryptocurrency linked to criminal activity, charging fees of up to 5% of the amount laundered.

The two defendants are in custody of Republic of Georgia authorities, and the US Attorney’s Office aims to seek their extradition to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

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