Analyst: Bitcoin's Daily Net Buying Volume Still Greater Than Mining Volume, But Tech Stock Sell-Off May Put Continued Pressure on Bitcoin

BlockBeats News, February 17, MEXC Research Chief Analyst Shawn Young said that cryptocurrency traders are expected to help drive Bitcoin's price back to $100,000.

Shawn Young said, "While buyers have not been buying digital assets on a large scale as they did months ago, the amount of Bitcoin they buy daily still exceeds the daily mining output. This has created a net positive supply dynamic that could trigger a short-term rebound."

Some analysts warn that the situation could worsen. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone even predicted that Bitcoin's price could plummet by 85%, ultimately falling to $10,000. His reasoning is that the stock market surge has sapped market volatility, while gold and silver have outperformed Bitcoin as safe-haven assets. Coupled with the industry seemingly losing confidence in former President Trump's crypto drive, this will drive prices down.

Crypto investment firm Keyrock researcher Ben Harvey and others believe that Bitcoin's next move is not determined by internal crypto factors but depends on macro factors such as Fed rate cuts, institutional investors buying Bitcoin ETFs, etc.

Bloomberg data shows that concerns about an AI spending bubble have triggered a surge in credit default swap trading—these complex financial contracts were nearly ignored a year ago. These contracts act as insurance and pay out when a company defaults on its debt. Currently, Alphabet has nearly $9 billion in debt and Meta has nearly $7 billion in debt linked to these contracts.

This means that hedge funds are increasingly using these derivatives to hedge against downside risk. In other words, investors are hedging against a major market sell-off that could drag down Bitcoin's price.

The so-called "AI panic trades" in tech stocks have been under pressure since January. The flagship Belief Technology ETF (tracking industry leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, Palantir, etc.) has fallen by just over 23% year-to-date. Analysts predict that the borrowing scale of large tech companies will increase from $165 billion in 2025 to $400 billion this year, to invest in AI data centers that could cost tens of trillions of dollars—if AI projects fail to generate returns, investor risk will increase.

Young said that Bitcoin trading trends are similar to tech stocks, so it is "the first to bear the brunt of the impact of liquidity or capital transfer."