Here are the takeaways from today’s Morning Brief, which you can register to receive every morning in your mailbox accompanied by:

One of the most difficult tasks in the industry is pricing targets. As we enter the 2025 outlook season, This becomes abundantly clear as strategists lay out their arguments based on underlying economic growth metrics, business projections, probabilities and experiences.

But what if you had almost none of these data points? This is what crypto analysts should do. Without having to look at the fundamentals and perspectives of the management team, you’re left with little other than a feeling – and the challenge of getting creative to measure it.

As our chart for the week shows, bitcoin has been climbing higher and higher since the election as demand increased. It has surfed to the $99,000 mark as it approaches six figures for the first time, thanks to the promise of an executive branch full of crypto allies – if not believers – who will unlock the next wave of demand.

“Anecdotally, we are seeing renewed interest in crypto from casual observers,” wrote Sean Farrell, head of digital assets strategy at Fundstrat, in a note to clients this week, noting that “friends and family” is like asking about crypto.

Once again, we are at the point in the cycle where the bitcoin conversation is spreading from the more niche financial media to almost everyone. And just like the peaks of 2017 and 2021, it’s just in time to become a key topic around the Thanksgiving table. Comparisons which of course raise the big question of whether this is the last summit.

But according to Farrell, “beyond social signals and towards more quantifiable market indicators, the current landscape does not present the froth of the March recovery or the cyclical peak of late 2021”.

One such “quantifiable” indicator of sentiment and market froth is the price difference between bitcoin in South Korea and bitcoin on, say, Coinbase – the other component of our chart of the week . The crypto industry calls this the “Kimchi Premium” or “Korea Premium Index,” and it arises from the country’s idiosyncratic capital control laws that prevent arbitrage. If you buy from South Korea, you have to sell it there. (This phenomenon helped inspire refereeing game by Sam Bankman-Fried.)

“When the speculative fervor begins, we end up seeing a premium in the price of BTC on Korean exchanges compared to other crypto exchanges,” Farrell wrote. “Currently, the premium is around 0%, indicating a lack of exuberance on the part of Korean traders.”

Usually, he added, the premium exceeds 10% if the market peaks.

This illustrates how complicated reading sentiment and demand is. Despite record highs, questions from family and friends, increased “buy bitcoin” queries on Google, and Coinbase’s high position in the App Store, this premium – along with various other creative sentiment tools that Fundstrat and others use to measure – are far from available. flashing warning signs. In fact, Farrell says that with the political winds favorable, there is room to flee.

“Last week’s rally should not be seen as mere speculative exuberance,” he wrote.

A great talking point for the Thanksgiving table.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is an editor at Yahoo Finance, where he publishes newsletters. Follow him on @ewolffmann.

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