On February 17, Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research, said that cryptocurrency traders are poised to drive Bitcoin's price back to $100,000.
Shawn Young stated, "While buyers aren't purchasing digital assets on the same massive scale as they were a few months ago, they are still buying more Bitcoin daily than mining it daily. This creates a net positive supply dynamic that could trigger a short-term rally."
Some analysts warn the situation could worsen. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone even predicts that Bitcoin's price could evaporate by 85%, eventually falling to $10,000. His reasoning is that the soaring stock market has absorbed market volatility, while gold and silver have outperformed Bitcoin as safe-haven assets. Furthermore, the industry's apparent loss of confidence in President Trump's crypto drive will further push prices lower.
Researchers at crypto investment firm Keyrock, including Ben Harvey, believe that Bitcoin's next move will not be determined by internal crypto factors, but rather by macroeconomic factors such as the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts and institutional investors buying Bitcoin ETFs.
Bloomberg data shows that concerns about an AI spending bubble have triggered a surge in credit default swap (CDS) transactions—complex financial contracts that were virtually untouched a year ago. These contracts are similar to insurance, providing compensation if a company defaults on its debts. Currently, nearly $900 million of Alphabet's debt and nearly $700 million of Meta's debt are tied 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 the price of Bitcoin.
Tech stocks, dubbed the "AI panic trade," have been suffering losses since January. BlackRock's flagship technology ETF (which tracks industry leaders such as Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir) is down slightly over 23% year-to-date. Analysts predict that large tech companies will borrow $400 billion this year, up from $165 billion in 2025, to invest in AI data centers, which could cost trillions of dollars in total—increasing investor risk if AI projects fail to generate returns.
Young stated that Bitcoin's trading patterns tend to mirror those of tech stocks, thus making it "the first to be affected by liquidity or capital shifts."
