Bitcoin Price Forecast - BTC-USD Slides to 15-Month Low Near $73K as BTC-USD Struggles Around $75K

Bitcoin Price (BTC-USD): 15-Month Lows, Leverage Flush and Balance-Sheet Risk

Macro Shock, Fed Hawk Turn and a 40% Slide in BTC-USD

BTC-USD is trading in the mid-$70,000s after an aggressive two-week selloff that drove the price down to roughly $73,000, the weakest print since late 2024 and the lowest level since around the November 2024 U.S. election period. From the all-time high near $126,000 reached in late 2025, Bitcoin has now surrendered more than 40% of its peak value. The latest sharp leg lower came after the nomination of Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve chair, a figure widely viewed as a hawk focused on shrinking the Fed balance sheet and maintaining tighter monetary conditions. That shift is hostile to high-beta assets, and BTC-USD is feeling it far more than equities: while major stock indices have already recovered to fresh records, Bitcoin remains pinned near 15-month lows, exposing how dependent the token still is on loose liquidity and risk appetite. The broader slide started in Q4 2025, when investors rotated out of the most speculative assets as the Fed cooled expectations for further rapid rate cuts after easing aggressively earlier in the year. Stocks digested that message and pushed to new highs; BTC-USD failed to follow, hurt by regulatory delays, political uncertainty around crypto legislation and fading enthusiasm for using Bitcoin as a straightforward macro hedge.

Michael Burry’s Death-Spiral Warning and Corporate BTC Balance-Sheet Exposure

Michael Burry has framed this downturn as more than a routine correction. His core claim is that BTC-USD has been exposed as a speculative chip rather than a reliable debasement hedge. During a period when gold futures have surged above $5,000 an ounce and silver recently spiked toward $121 before correcting, Bitcoin has moved in the opposite direction, dropping roughly 40% from its October high instead of rising with hard assets. That failure to track metals undermines the “digital gold” narrative that many corporate treasuries and funds leaned on when they accumulated BTC through 2024 and 2025. Burry’s deeper concern is corporate balance sheets. Strategy, the most aggressive listed Bitcoin-treasury play, is estimated to have an average BTC cost around $76,000 per coin. With BTC-USD trading below that line multiple times this week, that balance sheet is now underwater on its core asset. Burry argues that another 10% decline from current levels could push Strategy into a position where funding channels tighten, lenders re-price the risk and equity markets question solvency. His scenario is a reflexive loop: underwater corporate treasuries lose access to cheap capital, are forced to sell BTC to defend credit metrics, those sales push BTC-USD lower, more balance sheets fall into distress and the process repeats. That same loop would hit miners next, as revenues are denominated in BTC while costs are largely fiat. John Blank is already talking about the possibility of a move down toward $40,000, roughly another 45% below current spot, if this cycle fully plays out. Under that kind of stress, the corporate “Bitcoin standard” model shifts from visionary to reckless in the eyes of most institutions, and valuation multiples on those stocks compress severely.

Credit Spreads, US Debt and Why Bonds Now Matter for BTC-USD

Underneath the headlines, the macro plumbing is out of balance. U.S. federal debt has reached around $38.5 trillion while the 10-year Treasury yield is back at roughly 4.28%, reflecting tighter financial conditions than the market grew used to in the 2010s. Yet the ICE BofA U.S. Corporate Option-Adjusted Spread sits near 0.75%, the tightest level since the late 1990s. Investors are only demanding about three-quarters of a percentage point in extra yield to own corporate bonds instead of Treasuries, despite mounting sovereign debt and a cooling economy. That disconnect matters for BTC-USD because past cycles show a consistent pattern: Bitcoin tends to trace out durable bottoms only after credit spreads widen decisively, not while they remain compressed. In 2018, 2020 and 2022, BTC found local floors after corporate spreads moved higher in response to stress. The lag tended to be three to six months between the initial move in spreads and a stable accumulation zone in Bitcoin. Right now spreads are still exceptionally tight, signaling that the credit market has not fully repriced risk. If the 10-year yield remains near 4.28% while growth softens and policy uncertainty rises, a move in corporate spreads toward the 1.5%–2.0% range over coming months is plausible. For BTC-USD, that likely means more volatility and potential downside first, then a better structural entry window once credit repricing is largely complete. A realistic timeline for a true accumulation phase is the second half of 2026 rather than the next few weeks.

On-Chain Flows, Whale Activity and Spot Outflows in BTC-USD

Flow data shows that this is not just a derivatives story. Whales and mid-term holders have been pushing coins to exchanges. In the latest spike, wallets holding more than 1,000 BTC sent about 5,000 coins to Binance in a single day, matching a heavy inflow first seen in December. At the same time, holders in the six- to twelve-month bracket also moved around 5,000 BTC, the largest transfer from that cohort since early 2024. Those are not casual day-trading sizes; they represent meaningful balance-sheet and portfolio shifts. Spot flows confirm the de-risking. Coinglass recorded about $54.45 million in net spot outflows for BTC-USD on February 4 alone, consistent with a two-week pattern dominated by distribution rather than accumulation. Instead of fresh long-term buyers stepping up at a discount, existing holders are trimming exposure even as price breaks to 15-month lows. At the same time, the spent output profit ratio has moved down toward 1, its weakest reading in roughly a year as BTC-USD traded around the $73,000–$74,000 band. SOPR near 1 indicates that many coins are being spent close to their original cost basis instead of at large profits. Historically, that aligns with late-stage phases of a selloff when the easy profit-taking has already washed through and remaining sellers are closer to break-even. The combination of aggressive spot outflows and SOPR compression says the market is in the zone where forced and defensive selling is high, but long-term value buyers have not yet decisively taken control.

Derivatives Liquidations, Leverage Washout and the $73,000 Print in BTC-USD

The speed of the recent drop is tied directly to leveraged positioning. BTC-USD tumbled to about $73,000 at its weakest point this week, down to the lowest level in roughly 15 months, before clawing back toward the $75,000–$76,000 area. On the way down, roughly $740 million in Bitcoin long positions were liquidated as margin calls hit and exchanges auto-closed underwater leverage. Once the price broke below near-term levels like $76,000, stop-loss orders and liquidations began cascading, forcing more BTC into the market at precisely the moment natural buyers were stepping back. Weekly performance reflects that process: nearly a 12% loss this week on top of roughly 10% the previous week. These types of 10–15% weekly swings are normal for BTC-USD, but they are devastating for anyone operating with high leverage or thin collateral buffers. The key point is that this move has washed out a lot of leverage, yet funding and perpetuals data still show cautious longs and aggressive shorts rather than an obvious clean slate. The leverage reset reduces the risk of an immediate further crash from purely mechanical liquidations, but it does not prevent a more fundamental decline driven by weak spot demand or macro hits.

Daily Technical Structure: Descending Channel, EMA Wall and Oversold Momentum in BTC-USD

The higher-timeframe chart for BTC-USD is clearly trending down and deeply extended. Price is trading below all four major daily EMAs, creating a steep overhead “supply band”. The 20-day EMA sits around $84,468, the 50-day near $88,280, the 100-day around $92,655 and the 200-day near $97,132. That stack shows that the market has been making lower highs for months; every bounce has stalled at a lower EMA before rolling over. The current range in the mid-$70,000s is a long way beneath that cluster, which means bulls have to climb roughly $8,000–$20,000 just to reach neutral territory on these moving averages. Price is also confined within a descending channel that has governed trading since October, with each rally failing along the channel’s upper trendline and each selloff pressing against the lower boundary. Daily RSI has dropped to about 28.75, firmly in oversold territory and at its lowest since the November 2024 correction. Oversold conditions create the conditions for sharp short-covering rallies, especially when combined with heavy liquidations and negative sentiment, but they do not automatically signal the end of the trend. As long as BTC-USD remains beneath the 20-day EMA near $84,468 and within the channel, the primary direction remains down, and rallies must be treated as counter-trend moves unless they break and hold above that first EMA and the channel top.

Intraday Picture: Bollinger Bands, Supertrend and the $74,000–$80,000 Battlefield in BTC-USD

Shorter-term charts show how fragile the current bounce is. On the 2-hour timeframe, BTC-USD broke below the lower Bollinger Band around $74,743 during the flush, then recovered to roughly $76,650. The 20-period simple moving average, which acts as the middle Bollinger line, sits near $77,435 and now marks immediate resistance for any further recovery attempts. The Supertrend indicator remains bearish around $78,137, confirming that short-term trend filters still favor selling into strength. The upper Bollinger Band near $80,126 outlines the first real resistance zone where profit-taking is likely to appear. Bulls need to close above that $80,000–$80,200 band and then challenge the $84,000-plus daily EMA region to suggest that the low-$70,000s marked a true inflection point. Until that happens, the base case is that bounces toward $78,000–$80,000 are relief rallies inside a larger downtrend. On the downside, a decisive close below approximately $74,000 would signal that the market is accepting lower levels and raise the probability of a slide toward the next key demand zone around $65,000. That $65,000 area lines up with prior consolidation and would represent roughly a 48% drawdown from the $126,000 peak, consistent with deep but not unprecedented Bitcoin corrections.

Sentiment, Correlation and the Current BTC Narrative Break

Market psychology around BTC-USD has swung hard from euphoria to concern. Fear gauges and social sentiment have shifted into extreme territory after the move to the $73,000–$75,000 range. For months, the dominant story was that Bitcoin had matured into a macro hedge alongside gold, supported by institutional adoption and corporate treasury strategies. The latest price action cuts directly against that story. Gold futures moving above $5,000 while BTC-USD falls 40% from its high undermines the “digital gold” framing. At the same time, BTC-USD is once again trading like a high-beta satellite around traditional risk assets: it weakened alongside tech stocks during risk-off waves and failed to participate fully in equity rebounds. The nomination of Warsh and the expectation of a slower, more cautious Fed easing path highlight that Bitcoin still trades on liquidity cycles rather than structural inflation hedging. Regulatory uncertainty adds another layer. U.S. lawmakers have delayed key crypto bills that could have clarified stablecoin, exchange and custody rules. Those delays keep a segment of institutional capital on the sidelines and leave the market more vulnerable to sudden changes in enforcement tone. Combine that with Burry’s framing of Bitcoin as a purely speculative instrument and Blank’s discussion of potential downside toward $40,000, and the current narrative looks fragile. The token is facing an “identity test” at the same time that macro, regulation and balance-sheet risks converge.

Impact on the Wider Crypto Complex and Cross-Asset Flows Around BTC-USD

The pressure on BTC-USD is spilling across digital assets and traditional markets. Ethereum and major altcoins have also sold off as holders raise cash, cover margin calls and reduce risk. Overall crypto market capitalization has dropped by hundreds of billions of dollars in less than a week as sentiment flipped from “buy every dip” to “protect capital.” Risk-off flows have favored gold and government bonds; investors looking for safety have been more comfortable adding exposure to a $5,000-plus gold market and 4.28% 10-year Treasuries than to a volatile Bitcoin chart that just broke multi-month support. Within crypto, the selling is not uniform. Tokens tied to leverage, lending and yield platforms are under more pressure as markets reassess counterparty and smart-contract risk, while some DeFi protocols with cleaner balance sheets are holding up slightly better. But the key driver remains BTC-USD itself. As long as Bitcoin continues to trade below major moving averages and carry-trade unwind risks remain elevated, the rest of the space will be treated as a leveraged extension of the same theme. On the equities side, companies with heavy BTC exposure on their balance sheets trade as high-beta proxies for the coin. Strategy is the obvious example, but miners and listed crypto platforms feel the same pressure as volatility rises and collateral values drop. That feedback loop is exactly what Burry is warning about: coins weaken, equity multiples compress, funding costs rise and forced supply emerges from entities that used Bitcoin as core collateral.

Forward Scenarios for BTC-USD: Key Levels, Timeframes and Probability Skew

From here, the market is effectively trading a set of clear scenarios. On the bearish side, a firm break and daily close below roughly $74,000, without quick reclamation, opens a path toward the $65,000 horizontal support band. That zone matches prior congestion, aligns with the descending channel’s lower extensions and would represent a drawdown of approximately 48% from the $126,000 peak. If that level fails under a backdrop of widening credit spreads and accelerating corporate or miner selling, deeper targets like the high-$40,000s or low-$50,000s enter the conversation, especially if Blank’s $40,000 scenario gains traction. On the bullish side, a sustained recovery requires a sequence of wins, not a single bounce. First, BTC-USD needs to stabilize above $75,000–$76,000, push through $80,000 and close comfortably above the 2-hour upper Bollinger Band near $80,126. Next, the price must retake the daily 20-day EMA around $84,468 and hold that level as support, proving that sellers have lost control of the short-term trend. From there, a climb back through the 50-day EMA near $88,280 and into the $90,000-plus zone would be needed to argue that the October-to-February downtrend has ended rather than paused. The macro overlay suggests that even if such a technical recovery starts, volatility will remain high while credit spreads stay near historical tights and Fed policy is in transition. The most realistic structural “reset and accumulate” window is tied to the timing of credit stress and policy signals, not to the next few trading days alone.

Verdict on BTC-USD: Bearish Bias, Tactical Bounces, Strategic Hold Rather Than Aggressive Buy

Given the current mix—price around the mid-$70,000s after a 40% drawdown from $126,000, spot outflows of roughly $54.45 million in a single day, whale and mid-term cohorts sending around 10,000 BTC to exchanges, daily RSI near 28.75, credit spreads at 0.75 with $38.5 trillion in U.S. debt and a 10-year yield at 4.28%—the balance of risk still leans negative. The technical structure points to a dominant downtrend with resistance stacked from $80,000 to just under $100,000. Macro signals say credit has not fully repriced stress, and key corporate balance sheets like Strategy’s are at or below their average BTC entry cost near $76,000, making them vulnerable to funding shocks if BTC-USD trades lower for long. In that context, the stance is bearish to cautious. For existing exposure, the setup aligns more with a Hold than a forced liquidation at current levels, because the market is already deeply oversold and heavy leverage has been flushed. For new capital, it does not justify an aggressive Buy at mid-$70,000s unless the strategy is explicitly high risk and long horizon. The more attractive risk-reward profile likely appears either closer to the $65,000 demand zone on further stress or after a convincing reclaim of the $84,000–$88,000 EMA cluster that proves sellers have lost control. Until one of those conditions is met, BTC-USD trades as a market where bounces are tactical trading opportunities, the primary trend remains down, and the structural accumulation phase is still ahead rather than already behind.

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