While no one has fond memories of the 2022 crypto winter — with the price of bitcoin falling 80% — the timeline was relatively brief, roughly one year from the blowoff top to the bottom. From there, bitcoin quickly doubled in price, rose through 2023, and ultimately hit a new record in early 2024.

Having called the bitcoin top in 2024 and seen the boom/bubble play out, I’ve been predicting the subsequent crash for a very long time. And voila, here we are.

Bitcoin's (CRYPTO:BTC) slide below $80,000 has raised fears of a deeper collapse, but market structure suggests the next leg down may be more compressed than in past cycles. Why Bitcoin's Market Structure Is Turning Bearish Bitcoin has fallen roughly 11% over the past week,

From the start of 2013 through the end of 2022, the price of an ounce of gold rose by just 8%. Since then, the price has surged 175% higher (as of Jan. 30). Something is clearly going on with the shiny precious metal. And investors are taking notice.

Bitcoin prices dropped to less than $75,000 on Sunday, February 1, reaching their lowest point since April 2025 as multiple variables combined to fuel losses.

With Bitcoin tagging a low of $74.5K yesterday, BTC is officially in the midst of its deepest drawdown of the current cycle. From the all time high near $126K set in October, last week’s pullback of around 12% means Bitcoin has corrected around 37% since the all time high.

The main impact of the price decline is slowing Strategy's ability to buy more bitcoin without diluting shareholders, as its stock now trades at a discount to its bitcoin holdings.

On January 29, 2026, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) crashed 15% from $96,000 to $80,000 in one day. The remarkable part was not the crash itself.

Bitcoin, as well as other alternative cryptocurrencies, experienced sharp price declines on Thursday and have yet to bounce back just one day later. Bitcoin fell to the lower $84,00 range yesterday and continued to slip into the early morning hours, hitting as low as $81,600.

There's seemingly no place for investors to hide right now.

A part of why many freelancers have begun to gravitate toward Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is the rising costs of using traditional global payment platforms. Many of them have started introducing fees and restrictions on transactions that noticeably cut into a freelancer’s bottom line.