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Crypto World

Bitcoin’s ‘hopium’ for bulls is over and this weekend’s slide may be just the beginning

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Chart showing monthly MACD crossover (TradingView)

Bitcoin’s price sank sharply over the weekend, sliding below $78,000 — its lowest level since April — as profit-taking collided with thinning liquidity and a scarcity of fresh buyers.

Traders told CoinDesk that a rally once backed by corporate demand, particularly from Strategy’s (MSTR) bitcoin purchases, has run out of steam, leaving markets vulnerable to forced selling and derivative liquidations.

For some market analysts, Saturday’s slide fits into a broader bearish pattern that has been emerging for months. Eric Crown, a former options trader at NYSE Arca, has argued since late October that bitcoin is in a sideways-to-downside phase, and that the optimism around a return to new highs — or a rotation from metals back into crypto — is misplaced “hopium” for bulls.

“It’s been my view since [the] end of October that BTC is in a sideways and downside phase… I do not think 80K is a macro low for bitcoin,” Crown, who now posts updates on the crypto market with more than 200,000 subscribers, told CoinDesk, underlining that recent price action may be part of a larger corrective regime.

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And the action in the options market backs up this bearish sentiment. Options traders are now increasingly betting that prices will fall below $75,000 and ditching their bullish bets of reaching $100,000. So much so that the dollar value of the number of active bitcoin put options contracts at the $75,000 level listed on Deribit platform now stands at $1.159 billion, almost matching the so-called notional open interest of $1.168 billion locked in the $100,000 call option.

Read more: Here’s why bitcoin traders are now betting billions on a drop below $75,000 and bailing on price rising higher

Bearish signals

Crown points to several technical indicators that have historically foreshadowed deeper corrections.

The monthly MACD — a technical trading indicator — crossed down in November, a rare signal that has preceded extended downturns in previous cycles.

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Additionally, the weekly 21 vs. 55 EMA (another technical indicator) recently crossed into bearish territory. When this happens, it is typically followed by multi-month losses. And the 2025 yearly chart closed as a “shooting star,” a candlestick pattern that often signals a medium-term reversal.

Chart showing monthly MACD crossover (TradingView)

Chart showing monthly MACD crossover (TradingView)

Bitcoin to $50,000?

Making matters worse for bulls, bitcoin has diverged from traditional markets since October, declining while equities and other risk assets held up — a pattern Crown sees as typical of late-cycle risk-off behavior.

“People generally sell the more speculative assets first,” he said.

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Beyond technicals, Crown highlights the speculative wash-out from October’s crash, which eliminated many leveraged altcoin positions and left traders wary of re-entering at elevated levels.

Read more: Crypto’s $19 billion ’10/10′ nightmare: Why everyone is blaming Binance for the bitcoin crash that won’t end

While not as extreme as some cyclical bears, Crown suggests bitcoin may fall to even lower levels — potentially into the mid-$50,000 to low-$60,000 zone — before stabilizing.

In fact, he says that range represents an area he’s personally eyeing to add to his long-term positions, framing the current market as a potential value-accumulation phase rather than the end of crypto’s broader cycle.

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Crypto World

Aethir Stops Bridge Hack After Contract Exploit

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Aethir Stops Bridge Hack After Contract Exploit

Aethir, a decentralized GPU cloud infrastructure designed for artificial intelligence, confirmed an attack on its bridge contracts and said it halted the exploit.

The platform said Friday that it had detected and contained an attack on its Aethir (ATH) bridge contracts connecting Ethereum to other chains.

The team behind Aethir said it promptly disconnected the compromised contracts upon detection and worked with major exchanges to blacklist tracked wallets, limiting losses to under $90,000.

The update came the day after the blockchain analytics platform PeckShield reported an exploit of Aethir’s cross-chain smart contract, AethirOFTAdapter, on Thursday. Estimating the losses at $400,000, PeckShield said the exploiter bridged the stolen funds from the BNB Chain to Tron, pointing to several addresses.

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Aethir’s response comes amid a broader wave of hacks in decentralized finance (DeFi), where attackers stole nearly $170 million from dozens of protocols in the first quarter of 2026.

Source: PeckShieldAlert

Aethir plans compensation, says main ATH supply on Ethereum is unaffected

After disconnecting the compromised contracts, Aethir said its main ATH supply on Ethereum is fully intact and unaffected.

The platform said it will release a full compensation plan next week and share a list of attacker wallets, along with a detailed post-mortem and repayment plan on Discord.

Source: Aethir

“Aethir remains fully operational,” Aethir said, adding that the platform is working with authorities and exchanges to freeze funds and trace the attackers.

Related: Drift sends onchain message to wallets tied to $280M exploit

Among partner exchanges that responded to the attack, Aethir mentioned exchanges such as Binance, South Korea’s Upbit and Bithumb, as well as HTX. It noted that the Web3 cybersecurity platform ZeroShadow contributed to the hack investigation by providing expert analysis.

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Aethir reported record revenue in 2025

Aethir is a decentralized GPU cloud computing network that provides distributed infrastructure for AI, gaming and enterprise workloads. Instead of relying on centralized data centers, Aethir aggregates GPU resources across a global network.

The platform reported $127.8 million in revenue in 2025, saying its decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) stack counted at least 440,000 GPU containers across 94 countries by the end of the year.

The platform is backed by major Web3 investors, including Animoca Brands, Hashkey and others, with over $140 million in funds raised for the ecosystem.

Magazine: Nobody knows if quantum secure cryptography will even work

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