Bitcoin Price Forecast: BTC-USD $126K Peak to $60K Flush and a Violent Rebound Toward $70K

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) – violent reset between $60,000 and $70,000 after a $126,000 peak

Price action, cycle context and current market profile

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) has shifted from euphoria to stress-test in a few months. After printing an all-time high near $126,000 in October 2025, price was crushed down to roughly $60,000, the lowest mark in about 15 months, and then bounced sharply back toward the $68,000–$71,000 area. Around $68,337.76, the move shows about +4.19% in the last 24 hours but still roughly -17.59% over seven days, classic behaviour after a leveraged washout where the weekly chart looks damaged but intraday flows already point to repair.
The broader crypto backdrop underlines how dominant Bitcoin is in this phase. Total digital-asset market capitalization sits near $2.46 trillion, down marginally on the day, with spot volume around $78.51 billion, more than a 35% drop from the prior period as volatility cools. Bitcoin commands about 56.22% market dominance, while Ethereum holds near 10.05%, making it clear this is a BTC-first market where the rest of the complex trades around the moves in BTC-USD rather than setting the tone on its own.

Liquidation wave, record volumes and capitulation structure

The selloff that took Bitcoin from well above $100,000 to the $60,000 zone in a straight line was not just a price event; it was a full-scale clearing of speculative leverage. Across derivatives, roughly $2.6 billion in positions were liquidated in only 24 hours. About $2.15 billion of that was on the long side, with around $1.1 billion in Bitcoin longs alone forced out. That kind of forced selling is precisely what you expect when positioning has become crowded and risk management gets delegated to margin engines.
Volumes matched the size of the move. The crash produced what has been described as the largest single-day volume candle in Bitcoin’s history, a textbook capitulation signature where the market finally flushes out weak hands. From there, the rebound from roughly $60,000 to about $68,400 represents a bounce of around 17% from the low, enough to confirm there is real demand at those levels, but not enough to declare the drawdown finished.
Sentiment data supports the idea that this was a washout rather than a calm repricing. The Fear & Greed Index collapsed to 6, deep in “extreme fear” territory and at levels last seen in June 2022, when the market was digesting the prior cycle’s biggest failures. At the same time, the Relative Strength Index sank into heavily oversold territory, historically a zone that attracts buyers rather than sellers. A positive Coinbase premium after the break below $60,000 shows that US spot players were stepping in aggressively into the weakness, not fleeing from it.

From the old $69,000 peak to the new $69,000 regime – same price, different Bitcoin

Looking at Bitcoin around $69,000 now and around $69,000 at the 2021 peak can be misleading if you focus only on the chart. Under the surface, the asset has changed dramatically. At the recent move through $69,106 on the BTC/USDT market, Bitcoin’s market capitalization hovered around $1.36 trillion, slightly above the roughly $1.3 trillion area at the 2021 high near the same price. That alone says the market is willing to assign a similar aggregate value, but the network metrics tell you why the structure is stronger.
Network security has scaled massively. Hash rate has climbed from roughly 180 exahashes per second at the 2021 peak to around 600 exahashes per second now, more than a three-fold increase in computing power securing the chain. That is miner capital, infrastructure, and operating expenditure committed to the network, signalling that underlying support for Bitcoin has deepened materially.
The drivers behind price at this level are also very different. The prior cycle’s $69,000 was powered by retail mania and first-wave institutional experiments. This cycle, the backdrop is spot Bitcoin ETF flows, macro hedge positioning and steady adoption. Regulated ETFs provide a regulated channel for pension funds, asset managers and advisors who will never hold private keys, creating a more consistent and rules-based demand profile than the retail-dominated flows of previous cycles.

Bithumb’s 620,000 BTC misallocation – operational shock but limited structural damage

The Bithumb incident is a stark illustration that while Bitcoin itself may be robust, individual venues are still capable of massive operational mistakes. The exchange planned a “Random Box” promotion that should have paid out between 2,000 and 50,000 Korean won per user. Instead, because the unit was mistakenly set to BTC rather than KRW, enormous notional amounts of Bitcoin were credited.
In headline terms, Bithumb reported that 620,000 BTC, worth about 60 trillion KRW at an approximate price of 98 million KRW per coin, was accidentally distributed across participant accounts at one stage. Roughly 695 people were in line for the promotion and more than 240 opened boxes and saw balances they never expected to see. Some immediately sold and locked in profits measured in the hundreds of millions of KRW at the individual level.
The selling pressure on that single venue was enough to drive the Bithumb Bitcoin price down to about 81.11 million KRW, more than 10% below other exchanges. Once the error was identified around 7:20 p.m., Bithumb halted deposits and withdrawals at 7:35 p.m. and restricted logins for the affected accounts. By the morning of February 7, about 99.7% of the misallocated 620,000 BTC (roughly 618,212 BTC) had been recaptured. Of the approximately 1,788 BTC that were actually sold (about 170 billion KRW), Bithumb clawed back around 93%, leaving roughly 125 BTC, or around 12.3 billion KRW, unresolved.
For the BTC-USD thesis, the key message is that this was not a protocol fault, not a hack and not a failure of cryptography. It was an internal control failure at a single venue that temporarily distorted its local order book. Global pricing quickly normalized as other exchanges continued to function normally and as Bithumb froze affected flows. The episode underlines exchange risk, highlights why regulators have moved quickly to investigate an event on the order of 60 trillion KRW, and at the same time shows that the Bitcoin market can digest venue-specific stress without systemic collapse.

Institutional posture, ETF demand and corporate balance sheets tied to Bitcoin (BTC-USD)

While leveraged speculators were being liquidated, larger players treated the drawdown as an opportunity to add exposure. The most visible example is Binance’s Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), which stepped in and bought about 3,600 BTC around $65,000 per coin, roughly $250 million of notional exposure. That came after an earlier tranche where the fund acquired 1,315 BTC for about $100 million, and it is part of a broader plan to convert roughly $1 billion of reserves into Bitcoin over a 30-day window. With around $565 million still earmarked for conversion, there is a built-in structural bid that has not yet fully played out.
Crypto hedge funds have also dialed their positioning higher. Aggregate market beta for global crypto hedge funds is now at its highest point in roughly two years, indicating that professional managers are running portfolios that will move strongly with Bitcoin instead of de-risking. That is a signal that those with the best data and tools do not view the recent drop as the start of a long winter but as a reset to reload exposure.
On the equity side, crypto-exposed companies have been trading like leveraged options on BTC-USD. A large listed Bitcoin holding company labeled “Strategy” jumped about 14% on Friday to around $122, even after reporting a quarterly loss of roughly $14.2 billion, and it still trades about 22% below its level at the start of the year. Galaxy Digital gained approximately 15%. These moves show how equity markets are pre-pricing wild swings in the underlying asset and are ready to reward any sign that the worst of a selloff is behind it.

MARA, miners and valuation leverage to Bitcoin’s path above or below $70,000

Among miners, MARA Holdings (MARA) is a useful gauge of how equity markets are mapping Bitcoin risk and reward. The stock soared around 22.4% to close near $8.24 as Bitcoin bounced back toward the $70,000 region, outpacing the underlying asset as high-beta sector names usually do in risk-on reversals.
Analyst targets on MARA span a wide range. One major house has lifted its price target to about $29 with an Outperform stance, focusing on the company’s aggressive hash-rate expansion programme, while another sits near $13, warning that the next halving will squeeze margins for miners that cannot keep costs under tight control. An internal valuation model points to a fair value around $23, which implies roughly +181% upside from $8.24. That model assumes revenue growth around 69.4%, a sustained improvement in profitability from recent margins near -21%, and the successful rollout of more efficient rigs and energy strategies.
Crucially, MARA holds more than 26,000 BTC on its balance sheet. That balance sheet makes the stock a levered proxy on Bitcoin: if BTC-USD sustains prices above $70,000, the case for the $23 fair value is coherent, and price can close that gap quickly. If Bitcoin falls back into a deeper bear phase, many of those rosy assumptions get destroyed, and equity holders wear the drawdown more violently than pure BTC holders do.

Altcoin tape, dominance and confirmation that this cycle is Bitcoin-led

The way major altcoins trade around Bitcoin right now confirms that this is a dominant-asset cycle, not a broad-based speculative mania where everything moves in lockstep.
Over the recent session, Bitcoin at about $68,337.76 has gained roughly 4.19% in 24 hours but is still down around 17.59% across seven days. Ethereum trades near $2,019.31, adding about 6.15% in a day but losing roughly 23.49% over the week. BNB sits around $638.35, up 2.51% in 24 hours and down 23.64% across seven days. XRP is near $1.41, with a +8.13% daily rise and a -16.36% weekly decline. Solana trades around $85.32, up 6.65% in a day and down 26.15% on the week. TRON (TRX) is at about $0.2745 with a 2.00% daily gain and 5.56% loss over seven days, Dogecoin around $0.09577 with 4.61% daily upside and 14.16% weekly downside, Bitcoin Cash near $519.99 with about 10.61% daily increase and only 3.17% weekly loss, and Cardano at roughly $0.2683, up 6.01% for the day and down 13.49% over the week. Hyperliquid (HYPE) stands out, trading around $33.34 with a modest 0.78% daily uptick but about 10.30% gains across seven days.
The pattern is clear. Short term, almost everything bounces after the crash; over a week, almost everything is still deep red, and altcoins have fallen more than Bitcoin in percentage terms. The dominance numbers, with BTC above 56% and ETH only just over 10%, fit this story. Large capital allocators are directing their risk budgets primarily toward Bitcoin, treating other tokens as peripheral or leveraged plays rather than as core holdings.

Technical structure: $58,000–$62,000 as the pivot, moving averages and momentum signals

On the chart, Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is trading inside a map defined by a very clear set of levels. The prior cycle peak near $69,000 has been retested and temporarily exceeded; the new absolute high near $126,000 in October 2025 has been followed by a drawdown of about 50% to roughly $60,000, and from there the market has bounced back into the high $60,000s and low $70,000s.
The most important reference for trend integrity is the $58,000–$62,000 band. That zone overlaps with the 200-week moving average, which has historically acted as the last meaningful support level before a cycle enters deep bear-market territory. As long as weekly closes stay above that band, the broader uptrend from much lower levels can still be considered intact and violent selloffs can be interpreted as cleansing phases rather than structural reversals.
Shorter-term measures also matter. When Bitcoin first reclaimed $69,000 in March 2025 and traded around $69,106 on the BTC/USDT market, it was sitting comfortably above both its 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages, with the RSI elevated but not in the extreme zone usually associated with immediate blow-offs. During the recent crash to around $60,000, RSI flipped to deeply oversold levels that have historically coincided with good medium-term entries rather than long-term tops. That shift from stretched momentum to oversold in such a short period is exactly what you see when leverage is being forced out quickly and new capital is waiting to take the other side.

Macro backdrop, regulation, mining economics and long-tail technology risk

The macro environment, regulatory setting and technological discussion frame the longer-term risk-reward for Bitcoin (BTC-USD) far beyond a single liquidation event.
On the macro side, signals from the Federal Reserve that it is willing to pause or slow quantitative tightening weaken the argument for holding excess cash in dollars and strengthen the case for non-sovereign stores of value. Real yields that are high enough to matter but not high enough to crush risk appetite leave room for assets like Bitcoin to play the role of a portfolio hedge against policy missteps and inflation surprises. A structurally weaker or more volatile US dollar tends to push investors toward scarce, globally accessible assets, and BTC fits that profile better than almost anything else.
Regulation and the ETF architecture are transforming the demand channel. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have turned BTC from a niche instrument into something that can sit in a traditional brokerage account with standard reporting and custody. That reduces the risk of sudden “ban” shocks that defined earlier cycles, because regulators are now deeply integrated into the plumbing of how mainstream capital accesses BTC. At the same time, events like the Bithumb error remind everyone that regulators will not hesitate to investigate operational failures, especially when they are measured in tens of trillions of KRW, and that exchanges must invest heavily in internal controls if they want to be trusted rails into the asset.
Mining economics are at an inflection. With hash rate around 600 EH/s, miners have poured enormous capital into infrastructure. Upcoming halving events will cut block rewards and put weaker operators under pressure. That is why companies like MARA are shifting to strategies based on owning power infrastructure, optimizing energy costs and even exploring AI compute to monetize data centers outside pure mining. These shifts do not change the core BTC thesis but they change who survives in the mining sector and how sensitive miner equities are to the next leg in the BTC-USD path.
The long-tail technology discussion, particularly around quantum computing, is not a near-term price driver but it is starting to influence how large holders plan. When a major corporate holder announces a Bitcoin security programme explicitly aimed at quantum threats, it signals that the ecosystem is beginning to think seriously about the lifecycle of cryptographic primitives. That matters for long-horizon capital that wants to know whether the asset can remain secure over decades, not just years.

Leverage through miners and holding companies and its feedback into Bitcoin (BTC-USD)

The interplay between Bitcoin and listed proxies creates a second layer of leverage that feeds back into sentiment. Miners and holding companies effectively amplify BTC’s moves. When BTC-USD sells off sharply, their equity prices often fall harder, which can force them to adjust treasury strategies, sell BTC or delay investments, adding incremental pressure. When BTC-USD recovers, those equities can surge, drawing in speculative equity capital that indirectly reinforces the confidence in the underlying coin.
The current cycle has already shown how this works. As Bitcoin rebounded from $60,000 toward $70,000, names like MARA jumped more than 22% in a single session, Strategy recovered around 14% and Galaxy Digital climbed roughly 15%. Those moves reprice the cost of capital for companies that hold or mine BTC, making it easier for them to fund expansion and harder for short sellers to maintain aggressive positions. The fact that these stocks can stage such rebounds after losses and write-downs in the billions suggests that the equity market still believes in the long-term BTC story and is willing to fund it through turbulence.

Verdict on Bitcoin (BTC-USD) after the crash and rebound – Buy, Sell or Hold

Putting the hard numbers and structures together, Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is trading in a zone where the long-term case remains intact while short-term volatility is extreme. Price has dropped roughly 50% from the $126,000 peak to around $60,000, then recovered to the $68,000–$70,000 band with about -17.59% over seven days and more than +4% in the last day. The market has just endured a $2.6 billion liquidation event, including about $1.1 billion in BTC longs, with the largest volume candle on record and a Fear & Greed Index reading of 6, exactly the kind of configuration usually associated with capitulation rather than the first leg of a prolonged bear market.
On the structural side, market capitalization near $1.36 trillion around $69,000, a hash rate that has climbed from around 180 EH/s to roughly 600 EH/s, net inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, large institutional buys like the 3,600 BTC acquisition by Binance’s SAFU at $65,000, and hedge-fund beta sitting at a two-year high all point in the same direction: capital that matters still wants exposure. The $58,000–$62,000 region, overlapping with the 200-week moving average, is the pivotal band. Holding that zone on a weekly scale keeps the bigger uptrend alive; a decisive break and sustained trade below it would force a rethink.
Given this configuration, Bitcoin (BTC-USD) justifies a Buy stance on the asset itself for a high-risk, multi-year horizon, with the clear understanding that swings of 30–50% remain part of the game and that $58,000–$62,000 is the structural line that must not fail if the current cycle is to remain intact.

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