Bitcoin Price Forecast: Whales Defend $60K Floor While $70K Still Blocks BTC-USD

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) – compressed between $60K and $70K after a vertical reset

From the $90K blow-off to a fragile floor around $60K

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is stuck in a tight band after unwinding the entire Trump-election melt-up. Price is fluctuating between roughly $60,000 and $70,000, recently trading around $67,000–$68,000, after touching about $70,378 on 9 February 2026 with a 7.56% gain over the prior week. That move came after a parabolic jump from $70,000 to $90,000 in less than two weeks, which left almost no strong demand between those levels. Once selling started, BTC sliced straight back through that thin zone until it finally found stability just above $60,000. Turnover tells the same story of exhaustion. Daily trading volume faded from a recent peak near $125 billion on February 5 to about $44 billion over the last 24 hours, showing a market that is still active but far from the frenzy seen at the height of the run. At the same time, the Crypto Fear & Greed Index sits at an “extreme fear” reading of 8, which means sentiment is deeply negative even though price is still far above previous-cycle highs.

Whale accumulation vs. capitulating mid-sized holders – 170,000 BTC in smart hands

On-chain positioning draws a sharp line between strong hands and latecomers. Large wallets have been adding into this drawdown. Addresses holding 1,000–10,000 BTC have increased their balances by roughly 100,000 coins in 2026, a 2.1% rise in holdings. Even larger entities with 10,000–100,000 BTC bought another 70,000 coins, lifting that group’s stack by around 3.1%. Altogether, big players absorbed around 170,000 BTC this year, with an average entry price close to $77,000 – about $11.5 billion in fresh exposure concentrated in the biggest balance sheets on the network. At the same time, smaller “whale-lite” addresses in the 100–1,000 BTC bracket flipped from buyers to sellers. They accumulated steadily while BTC traded above $100,000, then started dumping aggressively once price slipped under $90,000. That pattern looks like textbook late-cycle optimism turning into capitulation, with large wallets on the other side patiently buying into their panic. The result is a market where the $60,000–$70,000 zone is increasingly owned by wallets that historically hold through turbulence rather than trade every swing.

Daily structure for BTC-USD – $70K as channel midline, $60K as the defining support

On the daily chart, BTC-USD is tracking a broad descending channel from the six-figure peak. The $70,000 band now lines up with the midline of that channel, which explains why every attempt to hold above $70K has failed. It is the intersection of structural resistance and a psychological supply pocket left behind by the previous breakout. Underneath current levels, $65,000 acts as a first, softer cushion where buyers have stepped in on shallow dips. The real fault line, however, is $60,000. On 5 February, BTC dropped about 14% in a single session into that number and immediately attracted heavy demand; order books thickened, and spot flows turned sharply positive. That reaction locked $60,000 in as a crucial battleground. Momentum indicators are no longer screaming oversold but are not yet signalling a clean bullish reversal. The RSI has climbed out of oversold conditions and crossed back above its 14-day moving average, which is an early buy trigger, but reclaiming $75,000 on a closing basis would still be needed to truly shift the medium-term trend away from “post-spike repair” and toward a new sustained leg higher.

Short-term tape – EMAs, VWAP and why $68,500 is a tactical pivot

Intraday action shows why rallies are stalling. On the one-hour chart, BTC-USD has repeatedly failed to keep trades above the $70,000–$72,000 resistance band. Each rejection has carved a lower local high and reinforced downside pressure. Price is pinned under both the 50-period and 100-period exponential moving averages, keeping short-term control in sellers’ hands. Around $68,500, the market has built a clear pivot zone. Moves into the $68,000–$68,500 pocket have attracted consistent selling interest, and one popular tactical setup frames that region as a short entry area with a target near $60,000, offering roughly a 5:1 reward relative to a tight stop above resistance. Beneath the current range, there is an important order block near $60,800–$61,000 tied to the prior yearly low at $59,800. An anchored VWAP drawn from that $59,800 low has behaved as a dynamic fair-value line; slipping under that VWAP without a swift recovery is another sign that bulls are not yet dictating the pace.

Liquidation heatmap – $80K short squeeze above, $60K liquidity pocket below

Derivatives and heatmap data frame the next big impulse. On the upside, a dense band of short-side liquidation liquidity sits between roughly $78,000 and $82,000, with more stacked liquidations building toward $85,000. If BTC-USD can break cleanly above $72,000 and hold, a surge toward that $78K–$82K zone could trigger a powerful short squeeze, as forced buy-backs from bearish positions amplify spot demand. On the downside, the map shows a liquidity void from about $66,000 down to $60,500. Price tends to move quickly through such thin zones as it hunts for clustered stops and resting orders. A final cluster of leveraged longs worth more than $350 million is concentrated near $60,500, lining up with the same region as the order block and the prior low. If $64,000–$65,000 fails and no strong spot bid appears, liquidations in that area can accelerate a sharp drop back to $60,000 and possibly a brief probe into the mid-$50,000s before any meaningful rebound. For now, BTC is trapped between $72,000 resistance and $60,000 support, with a volatility expansion on the cards once either side gives way.

Range expectations – consolidation, flush or squeeze inside the $60K–$72K cage

Given the current structure, three broad paths dominate the outlook for BTC-USD. The first is extended consolidation, where price continues to bounce between $60,000 and $70,000, occasionally stretching toward $72,000 on the top end or dipping toward $63,000–$64,000 on the low end. On the 4-hour chart, shrinking volume and overlapping candles already show a market in equilibrium, with gentle drift toward an internal support near $63,000. Ongoing whale accumulation during such sideways action would turn this range into a durable base for the next advance. The second path is a bearish flush, where a convincing break below $66,500 – the area where BTC is currently consolidating inside a descending channel – sends price toward the $63,400–$64,600 support zone highlighted by short-term technicians. Losing that shelf pushes BTC back into the $60,000 spotlight; a clean violation there would expose the thin liquidity pocket down into the mid-$50,000s, especially if macro risk flares at the same time. The third path is a bullish breakout, where BTC manages a sustained close above $70,000, then punches through $72,000. That move would invalidate the pattern of lower highs, open a path toward $78,000–$82,000, and likely fuel a rapid short squeeze around $80,000. Stabilisation above $75,000 after that sort of run would be the confirmation that the next bullish phase is underway rather than a one-off spike.

Competing havens – gold, altcoins and how BTC fits into the allocation puzzle

Capital did not simply disappear when BTC-USD broke from $90,000 to the $60,000 region; much of it rotated. One explanation from major research desks is that gold has been picking up flows that might otherwise have stayed in Bitcoin, as investors sought a more traditional hedge exactly when BTC volatility exploded. At the same time, parts of the market are positioning for select altcoin outperformance over a longer horizon. Names like Cardano – with the upcoming launch of USDCx improving stablecoin liquidity – privacy-focused assets such as Zcash, AI-linked protocols like Bittensor, and high-throughput base layers such as Solana are being framed as potential structural winners if their ecosystems keep growing. Even the most optimistic voices on that front still anchor their core exposure in Bitcoin and Ethereum, treating those altcoins as leveraged bets on specific themes. That means BTC remains the primary reference point for the entire complex: when BTC drifts around $60,000, the sector is effectively marked down; when BTC pushes through $80,000–$90,000, risk appetite for smaller names tends to surge.

Digital inclusion and BTC at $70,378 – visible everywhere, accessible unevenly

The $70,378 mark recorded on 9 February shows how deeply Bitcoin has entered mainstream financial dashboards, appearing alongside inflation prints and equity indices. Yet the ability to act on that information is not evenly distributed. Around 6 billion people were online in 2025, up from 5.8 billion in 2024, but roughly 2.2 billion remain offline. Participation requires reliable connectivity, appropriate hardware and familiarity with digital finance; without those, BTC’s price becomes something to watch rather than something to interact with. That gap turns Bitcoin’s ticker into a symbol of both innovation and exclusion: it signals the potential of borderless finance while underlining that a large portion of the world can see the opportunity but cannot yet access it. For price dynamics, this means that most of the marginal demand still comes from regions and populations already fully embedded in the digital economy, which concentrates both upside and risk in a smaller base than the headline awareness might suggest.

Risk profile, sentiment and what the current BTC-USD structure really implies

The current setup for BTC-USD is classic post-mania repair work. Price has fallen hard from above $100,000 but is still trading near $67,000–$68,000, well above prior cycles. Leverage has been damaged but not erased; there is enough open interest to fuel another sharp leg either way. Large wallets have committed around 170,000 BTC, or $11.5 billion at an average of $77,000, showing real conviction below that level. Volumes have faded from $125 billion to $44 billion, reflecting caution and fatigue rather than renewed euphoria. Extreme fear on sentiment gauges coexists with a technically defined range anchored around $60,000 support and $70,000–$72,000 resistance, with obvious liquidity magnets at $80,000+ on the upside and the mid-$50,000s on a severe downside extension. That combination – heavy long-term buying, retail anxiety, compressed range and clear heatmap targets – is typically the backdrop that precedes a multi-week directional move rather than an extended period of drift.

BTC-USD stance – Buy, with respect for a possible $60K sweep before the next leg

At current levels, the balance of evidence points to a constructive medium-term view on Bitcoin (BTC-USD), with the caveat that another test of $60,000 remains a live risk. The $60,000 zone has already proven itself once as a powerful demand area, with a 14% intraday plunge on 5 February swiftly reversed. Whale accumulation of 170,000 BTC around $77,000, RSI stabilisation, and a market locked in extreme fear all argue that this region is more likely to act as a cycle base than a trap, as long as no major macro or regulatory shock breaks the structure. From a 6–18-month perspective, the favourable play is Buy, built on the assumption that the $60,000–$62,000 pocket may be revisited, but that this band is setting up as the near-term floor for a later run at $78,000–$82,000 and, ultimately, a retest of the prior highs once macro conditions line up.

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