Bitcoin Mid-February Outlook: Funding Negative, Spot Demand Missing
In Brief
Bitcoin’s been doing that annoying thing it does after a violent flush: it stops being a “trend” and turns into a problem you have to sit with.
Bitcoin’s been doing that annoying thing it does after a violent flush: it stops being a “trend” and turns into a problem you have to sit with. The chart basically tells the whole story in one glance. We had the air-pocket from the high 80s down into the low 60s, a nasty wicky rebound, and then… nothing clean. Just this boxed-in chop, roughly mid-60s to low-70s, with price repeatedly walking up to the range ceiling, getting slapped, and drifting back into the middle. Right now we’re dangling around ~68–69, which is psychologically comforting because it’s “not 60,” but structurally it’s still the lower third of the bigger dump.
If you’re thinking “immediate-term structure looks a bit better,” I’m with you, but only conditionally. Inside the blue box, the market is at least trying to stop bleeding. Dips are getting met faster, bounces are less panicky, and the sell candles don’t have that same freefall follow-through. That’s the kind of micro-behavior you get when forced sellers have mostly finished and the remaining supply is more discretionary. But zooming out one level, it’s still a post-crash range at the bottom of a major impulse down. In other words: short-term bullishness can exist inside a broader “this might just be basing before the next leg” context. Both can be true, and that’s exactly why this zone feels unresolved — because it is.
So what actually moved this week, and why did it feel so… mechanically stressed?
A big part of the story is that flows have been ugly and confidence has been fragile. We’ve got reports of crypto funds logging yet another week of outflows while BTC dipped below $70K, which matters because it frames rallies as “relief” rather than “new demand.” When the default flow regime is money leaving the room, upside tends to get sold into quickly, not because everyone is a genius bear, but because managers are managing risk and reducing exposure. Layer on top the chatter about spot ETF outflows and the general “is TradFi backing away?” narrative (open interest falling, futures positioning cautious), and you get a market that can bounce, but struggles to stick the landing above resistance.
Derivatives data adds another twist: negative funding and “overcrowded shorts” talk. That’s the gasoline for sharp upside jolts — not a warm bullish trend, more like a trapdoor under bears. When funding sits negative for multiple days, you can get these sudden squeezes that feel bullish in the moment, but they’re often just position-cleaning events unless spot demand shows up to keep the move alive. That’s how you end up with the vibe we’re seeing: fast pops toward the top of the range, then a fade when the squeeze fuel is spent.
Macro didn’t exactly deliver a clean signal either. There was a moment where softer inflation data helped BTC push up toward the high-60s / ~69K area, but at the same time the broader message stayed “rate-cut odds still low.” Markets like Bitcoin hate being a high-beta risk asset without the tailwind. So you get these reactive moves to prints and headlines, but not the kind of sustained bid that turns a range into an uptrend.
Now, the devastating plunge itself is still echoing through sentiment — and you can see that in the way the news cycle is behaving. A lot of the loudest narratives right now aren’t about adoption euphoria; they’re about stress, plumbing, and existential risk.
The quantum thread is a perfect example of this. You’ve got high-profile voices warning that quantum risk is starting to get priced, plus the spicier angle that institutions could get fed up and try to pressure Bitcoin development if they feel protocol risk threatens their treasury strategy. Whether you buy the thesis or not, the point is: during fragile regimes, markets grab onto “structural threat” stories because everyone’s already on edge. That’s not the kind of backdrop where buyers chase breakouts confidently. It’s the kind where rallies are treated like opportunities to de-risk.
And while that’s happening, the institutional “crypto is becoming finance” drumbeat keeps getting louder — just in a very different tone than 2021. Instead of monkey JPEGs, the headlines are all infrastructure and regulated rails. BlackRock pushing tokenized T-bills into DeFi via Uniswap is a pretty big signal in terms of direction of travel: not “DeFi is replacing banks tomorrow,” but “big balance sheets are willing to touch onchain venues if the wrapper looks right.”
Same with Franklin Templeton working with Binance around tokenized money market funds as collateral, Apollo entering crypto lending through a Morpho tie-up, and Anchorage/Kamino building ways for institutions to borrow against staked SOL without moving custody. This is the quiet buildout of credit and collateral systems — which is bullish long-term, but short-term it can coincide with brutal repricing because the market is transitioning from vibes to balance-sheet math.
On the corporate and public-market side, the tone is also “stress + opportunism.” Coinbase missing earnings and posting a big quarterly loss is the kind of thing that reinforces the “crypto trades like a risk tech complex” narrative, not digital gold.
At the same time, you’ve got ARK flipping back to buying Coinbase stock, which is basically Cathie doing what she does: leaning into volatility when the tape looks washed. And of course Saylor signaling yet another Bitcoin buy amid the rout keeps the “there is a structural bid somewhere” story alive — but note the subtext in some of those pieces: even the most committed buyers are thinking in terms of surviving huge drawdowns and financing structure, not just “up only.”
So where does that leave the chart read, practically?
If you want to argue for near-term bullishness, the case is basically: capitulation down to ~60, sentiment hitting extremes, shorts leaning in, and price holding a mid-60s floor while repeatedly probing up toward the low-70s. That’s a recipe for a squeeze that finally breaks the range top — if spot demand shows up and if the breakout holds instead of immediately wicking back into the box. It’s not crazy.
If you want to stay cynical (and honestly, the tape has earned cynicism), the case is: we’re still in a distribution/consolidation pocket after a macro downtrend impulse, ETF and fund flows have been leaking, and the market hasn’t convincingly reclaimed the levels that would turn the bigger structure back up. In that framing, the chop is just the market building liquidity for the next move, and until it proves otherwise, the path of least resistance can still be “retest the low end of the range,” with the nasty version being a revisit of ~60 if support fails.
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About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in cryptocurrency, zero-knowledge proofs, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
