Binance Founder Crushes Bitcoin Critic In Game-Changing BTC Vs. Gold Debate

CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index is down $3192.93 today or 3.45% to $89340.76

• Down two consecutive days, down 3.92% over this period
• Down 2.07% this week
• Worst weekly performance since the week ending Nov. 21, 2025, when it fell 10.32%
• Down 4.36% year-to-date
• Down 29.25% from its all-time intraday high of $126272.76 on Oct. 6, 2025
• Down 12.05% from 52 weeks ago (Dec. 6, 2024), when it traded at $101581.16
• Down 29.25% from its 52-week intraday high of $126272.76 on Oct. 6, 2025
• Up 18.42% from its 52-week intraday low of $74435.56 on April 7, 2025
• Traded as low as $88149.87
• Down 4.74% at today's intraday low

Note: CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (XBX) at 4 p.m. ET close

Data compiled by Dow Jones Market Data

Is Elon Musk’s SpaceX Really Selling Its Bitcoin, Or Is It Just FUD?

However, on-chain data suggests a more nuanced picture, and there is no confirmed evidence of liquidation.

SpaceX Bitcoin Sell Fears

Arkham data shows SpaceX moved around 2,246 BTC in the past 12 hours and one week prior. 

The transfers include two large outflows totaling over $200 million, alongside several small inbound transactions from Coinbase Prime.

The company still holds over 5,012 BTC, valued at roughly $448 million. That means less than half of SpaceX’s tracked Bitcoin has moved, despite viral claims that the company transferred “all” of its holdings.

However, the receiving wallets are not labelled as exchanges, and no direct link to Binance, Coinbase or OTC liquidation desks has been confirmed. 

This weakens the assumption that the transfers represent a planned dump.

There are also neutral explanations. SpaceX could be rotating wallets for security, consolidating funds, or shifting custody structure. Corporate treasuries regularly rebalance or upgrade storage without selling.

Also, this move could even be interpreted as potentially bullish. Funds may be headed toward OTC desks or multi-sig vaults instead of sell-side liquidity pools, which would apply no immediate market pressure.

Today, Bitcoin has dropped below $90,000 again, but it was mostly driven by US ETF outflows and macro fears from the Bank of Japan increasing interest rates. 

For now, SpaceX’s activity is notable, but not conclusive. Until the destination wallets link to a known exchange or distribution pattern appears, the claim that Elon Musk’s space giant is selling Bitcoin remains unproven.

The line between fear and fact is thin, and today, the noise is louder than the data.

Crypto analyst Miles Deutscher has issued one of the most forceful bottom calls of this cycle, assigning a 91.5% probability that Bitcoin’s low is already in. In a X thread on December 4, he wrote: “F*ck it. I’m putting my neck on the line here. I’m 91.5% certain that the BTC bottom is in. And if it is, A LOT of people are about to be caught offside.”

Is The Bitcoin Bottom In?

Deutscher bases his conviction on four “pillars”: market reaction to news, the historical behaviour of FUD events, a shift in flows, and an improving global liquidity backdrop. Each pillar is scored in an internal model that culminates in a 91.5/100 bullish reading.

He starts with price behaviour versus headlines. Over recent days, he notes, the market has digested an “influx of bad news” – including renewed Tether FUD, another round of “China banning crypto,” MicroStrategy scrutiny and concerns around a Bank of Japan–driven yen carry trade unwind.

“Despite all this bad news, price rallied,” he writes, calling this “the first time since the major selloff began” that Bitcoin has responded positively to a destructive news cycle. He underscores an old trading adage: “The reaction to news is more important than the news itself. This tells you everything you need to know.”

The second pillar is a systematic look at whether such FUD clusters tend to coincide with local lows. Deutscher says he backtested “every single time Tether, China, BOJ, and Microstrategy FUD entered the market” in a similar way. His conclusion is stark: “Every single time, these FUD events marked a local bottom. Tether FUD = bottom.

China ‘banning’ crypto = bottom. Bank of Japan/carry trade concerns = bottom. Microstrategy FUD = bottom.” On this basis, his AI model assigns the maximum score of 28/28 to this pillar. He cautions that “in isolation, this factor doesn’t matter much,” but argues that, combined with the first pillar, it “starts to paint a convincing bull case.”

The third pillar is flows, which he calls “the most critical factor (net buy/sell pressure).” For the past weeks, flows were “aggressively negative” with OG whales selling and ETFs dumping. Recently, he argues, this picture has changed. ETF inflows are “starting to stabilise & uptick,” treasury-company holdings remain stable, and “OG whales have stopped relentlessly dumping (this is clear on the orderbooks).” This earns a 22.5/25 score in his model. He adds one key caveat: as long as DATs exist, “there are material risks.”

The fourth pillar is the liquidity and macro environment. Deutscher notes that market liquidity had been tightening for months, but now “things are shifting back toward increased market liquidity,” with global financial conditions “reloosened to near highs.” He highlights “macro tailwinds” and adds that a new, potentially more dovish Fed chair is coming and “QT has now officially ended.” This set of factors receives a 9/10 score in his framework.

Aggregating all four pillars leads to the headline figure: “With all four market pillars taken into account, we arrive at a final score of 91.5/100.”

Deutscher, however, explicitly lists caveats. He points out that US markets “have been on a massive run” and may need to cool off, that DATs “are still seeing some short-term pressure,” and that ETF flows “can flip negative at any time.” His conclusion is probabilistic rather than absolute: “Markets are a game of probabilities, and I think the odds are in favour of the bottom being in – given the extreme FUD we’ve had and the market’s reaction to it.”

At press time, Bitcoin traded at $91,035.

Key takeaways:

• The Federal Reserve’s move away from quantitative tightening and rate cuts creates liquidity, making fixed-income assets less attractive.

• Surging tech credit risks, as evidenced by high Oracle debt protection costs, prompt investors to seek alternative, scarcer assets like Bitcoin.

Bitcoin (BTC) fell 4% on Friday to a low of $88,140, extending its decline to 19% since November. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is now less than 1% from its all-time high. This sharp divergence may soon close with a strong upside move for Bitcoin, fueled by a major shift in central bank policy and growing credit stress.

This perfect storm has the potential to propel Bitcoin to the psychologically critical $100,000 barrier before the year concludes.

Fixed income’s fading appeal and tech credit scare could fuel Bitcoin rally

The most critical factor is the Federal Reserve’s pivot from quantitative tightening, a process of draining liquidity from the financial system by allowing the maturity of Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities without reinvesting the proceeds. The Fed officially halted this program on Dec. 1.

Bitcoin miners are learning the hard way that “number go up” doesn’t always trickle down. Even with Bitcoin prices still elevated by historical standards, mining margins have been sharply squeezed, with some industry analysts describing the current climate as the “harshest margin environment” on record. Balance sheets are shrinking, leverage is being reduced, and companies such as CleanSpark are moving to pay down Bitcoin-backed credit lines.

The strain is spilling into public markets. Bitcoin miners and other BTC “proxy” trades have come under heavy pressure, highlighted by the collapse in shares of American Bitcoin.

Not every corner of the market is retreating, however. Capital is flowing into crypto-adjacent platforms, with prediction market Kalshi recently raising $1 billion at an $11-billion valuation after a tenfold increase in trading volumes since 2024, overtaking Polymarket.

Meanwhile, Ether is gaining traction in derivatives markets. CME Group reports that Ether futures volumes have recently surpassed those tied to Bitcoin, reflecting rising options volatility and growing trader interest.

This week’s Crypto Biz examines the intensifying pressure on Bitcoin miners, the surge in Ethereum derivatives activity and Kalshi’s blockbuster funding round.

Bitcoin mining companies squeezed by “harshest margin environment of all time”

Renewed volatility in the Bitcoin market has pushed mining economics into the “harshest margin environment of all time,” according to TheMinerMag, which cited structurally low mining revenues driven by falling hash prices, rising operating costs and equipment payback periods stretching beyond 1,000 days as key warning signs.

“Balance sheets are retracting” in response to the worsening economics, the publication said, pointing specifically to CleanSpark’s decision to fully repay its Bitcoin-backed credit line with Coinbase as an example of miners moving to reduce financial risk.

Bitcoin mining stocks have remained volatile in 2025 as the industry continues to adjust to the revenue shock from last year’s Bitcoin halving, which cut mining rewards in half. At the same time, many miners are pivoting toward AI and high-performance computing workloads in an effort to secure more stable, predictable revenue than Bitcoin mining alone can provide.

American Bitcoin stock crashes as BTC proxy trade unravels

Shares of American Bitcoin, a mining and digital asset treasury company associated with Eric Trump, plummeted more than 50% in a single trading session this week, underscoring the extreme volatility still affecting crypto-linked equities.

The stock lost roughly half its value shortly after the market opened Tuesday, extending a broader sell-off across Bitcoin mining stocks and other so-called crypto “proxy” trades that has intensified since Bitcoin pulled back from its October high.

American Bitcoin shares are now down more than 75% from their post-listing high of $9.31, reached shortly after the company began trading publicly through a reverse merger with Gryphon Mining. The steep decline underscores growing investor caution toward speculative crypto equities as Bitcoin prices and mining economics come under pressure.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently took to the X social media network to advocate for stronger cryptography standards. 

Buterin has calculated that Bitcoin's cumulative proof-of-work (the sum of all computational effort expended on mining) stands at roughly 2^96 hashes based on recent difficulty data. This marks a significant computational milestone equivalent to 96 bits of security.

Buterin has credited Ethereum researcher Justin Drake for advocating 128-bit security levels (as seen in proposals like BLS12-381 curves and the Lean Ethereum roadmap). This would make it possible to future-proof against growing hash power.

Staying ahead 

Bitcoin secures itself via the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, which secures the network by requiring miners to perform billions of SHA-256 hashes to find valid blocks. 

The cumulative PoW represents the total "energy barrier" an attacker would need to overcome to rewrite history.

Reaching 2^96 total hashes means Bitcoin's chain is now protected by the equivalent of ~96 bits of brute-force security. This, of course, is an enormous amount of real-world computation.

Buterin has used this specific milestone to argue that cryptographic primitives across the industry should target at least ~128-bit security levels. In such a way, they would be able to stay comfortably ahead of growing computational power. 

Many older crypto systems effectively provide only ~128 bits of security against certain attacks, which could make them potentially vulnerable.