Bitcoin just missed its $95k Boxing Day record, triggering signal that demands immediate attention

Every Boxing Day, I make the same cup of tea, check the same price chart, and ask the same question: What story is Bitcoin telling this year?

Line up the December 26 close from the start of the exchange era to today, and a pattern appears. The holiday reveals the mood that carried us into the year-end.

Boxing Day as a mirror of Bitcoin’s maturity and market psychology

In the early 2010s, the series was tiny on the page, and Bitcoin closed about $0.26 on Boxing Day.

Liquidity was thin, the market was more chat room than Wall Street, and every uptick felt like a science experiment. By 2013, the experiment had grown teeth.

China’s policy shock in early December set the tone, and that Boxing Day printed in the hundreds of dollars. It was proof that rules and railways matter when a market is still learning to be one.

The following year felt like winter on purpose. Mt. Gox collapsed in February 2014, confidence drained, and by Christmas, the tape was tired.

2015 started to heal, the next halving sat on the horizon, and the holiday close edged higher. In 2016, we saw a proper year-end rally as the halving afterglow met capital pressure from a weakening yuan.

The chart finally looked like a staircase rather than a heartbeat.

Then came the 2017 boom that taught everyone what euphoria looks like on a daily chart. Futures launched, leverage was everywhere, and by Christmas, the air was coming out.

The Boxing Day close held far above prior years. The lesson was simple: bull markets run hot, and cool air feels colder when you are sweating.

In 2018, the opposite chapter was written: a bruised market, a slight bounce into the holidays, and a quiet close that mattered only to those recording the cycle for later. 2019 drifted, range-bound and technical, waiting for a new reason to care.

That reason arrived in 2020. Institutions stepped in, PayPal opened the door to millions of users, and the digital gold narrative met real balance sheets.

There was a wobble around December 21 when a fresh COVID variant hit the headlines. Momentum won anyway, and the Boxing Day print pushed to new territory.

By 2021, the macro story had the wheel. The Federal Reserve turned hawkish, rates rose on the horizon, and risk assets felt it.

Bitcoin closed strong for the year, but the mood around Christmas was not carefree. Then, in 2022, the floor gave way after FTX exploded in November.

The December 26 close sat near the cycle lows. Trust takes time to rebuild, even when the calendar asks for cheer.

The rebuild finally showed up in 2023. Traders front-ran the idea of U.S. spot ETFs, rate-cut hopes crept in, and Bitcoin finished the month back above $40,000, proper Santa rally feel.

That set up 2024, the year the Boxing Day chart will remember. The ETFs were live, the halving reduced new supply, and the December 26 close printed about $95,714, the highest Boxing Day close on record.

This year, 2025, came in lower on the day, about $88,500. The market spent autumn digesting a louder central bank, the dollar stayed firm, and risk budgets tightened into the holidays.

ETF flows remained a support; macro tone chose the ceiling.

Boxing Day closes reveal where Bitcoin sentiment settled each year

If you plot the Boxing Day bars and lay a line over them for each year’s high, the picture becomes clear. The holiday bar tells you where sentiment ended up; the high tells you what the year made possible.

In the bull years, the bar sits close to the line. In the bear years, the gap yawns.

2013 gapped on policy, 2017 gapped on excess, 2022 gapped on trust. 2024 almost touched the line because the whole year did the heavy lifting.

What does that say about the next Boxing Day? Seasonality is a superstition unless money agrees; the drivers that matter are the same ones in the stories above.

Monetary policy sets the weather; ETF creations and redemptions set the tide; halvings shape the shoreline; and year-end microstructure can turn ripples into waves.

If rates ease, if net ETF demand holds, and if miners keep selling pressure light, the bar can rise toward the line. If growth slows, if real yields rise, or if funds take profits into thin holiday books, the gap can widen again.

Boxing Day is just a date; it feels like a milestone because it pins a year of hopes and habits to a single print. The print at the top of the stack is 2024.

The rest of the story is how we get from here to the next one that sits higher.