Bitcoin Price Faces Potential 60% Decline As Expert Warns Of ‘Major Bull Trap’

Fundstrat’s Tom Lee told attendees at Binance Blockchain Week that he believes the worst leg of the recent crypto slump is likely over and that markets may be ready for a gradual recovery. He pointed to weakening selling pressure and growing underlying activity as reasons for cautious optimism.

Market Sentiment May Be Near A Turning Point

According to Lee, mood on the street turned darker after October, with many investors showing fatigue after steady losses. He said the current selling looks closer to exhaustion than to the start of another major decline. Trading desks have cut back. Volume has thinned. Sentiment is low. Lee argued that often, when pessimism peaks, conditions for a reversal begin to form.

Bitcoin Drawdowns Are Not Uncommon

Based on reports, Bitcoin has fallen about 36% from its all-time high in the recent retreat. That size of drop has happened in prior cycles, including 2017 and 2021, and has been followed by rallies that reached new records.

Lee pointed to long-term returns for bitcoin and ether compared with some traditional assets over the last decade, saying crypto’s gains were larger. He used that history to support the idea that patient holders have been rewarded after past stress. Tokenization Could Be A Major Story In 2026

Lee also presented tokenization as a key theme for the future. He said large institutions are preparing to move more financial products on-chain and that, if real estate joins the shift, close to a quadrillion dollars in assets could eventually be tokenized.

Stablecoins were cited as an early example of why tokenized instruments can attract demand. He suggested that a broader institutional push could add steady interest to the market over time. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF Was Highlighted As A Signal

Reports have disclosed that BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF has become one of the firm’s top fee-earning products, a fact Lee used to show growing involvement from legacy finance. That kind of institutional participation, he argued, points to deeper engagement from big players who were previously on the sidelines.Adoption Gap Suggests Large Upside

According to Lee, only 4.4 million bitcoin wallets hold more than $10,000 in BTC, while nearly 900 million people globally have more than $10,000 in retirement savings.

He said that gap shows how early the market still is and argued that if just a fraction of those savers put money into bitcoin, adoption could expand by as much as 200 times. The figure is speculative, he acknowledged, but he used it to show the potential scale for future demand. What This Means For Investors Now

Lee questioned whether the old four-year cycle should be used as a strict guide. He suggested recent moves were driven more by de-leveraging and structural shifts than by the halving rhythm that shaped earlier cycles.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView

The largest Ethereum wallet MetaMask is moving into the prediction market sector with an integration with Polymarket.

"You can now trade on the future outcome of real world events inside your wallet," Consensys' Gabriela Helfet wrote in a recent blog. "You’ll also earn MetaMask Rewards points with every prediction you make."

In addition to adding a new access point for Polymarket, the integration will enable users to fund their accounts using "any token on any EVM chain" via "one tap funding."

Polymarket has seen massive growth over the past year since first receiving mainstream exposure during the runup to the U.S. elections in November 2024. President Trump’s embrace of crypto and a softening regulatory outlook in the country helped foster continued growth for the platform, which recently received official approval to re-enter the U.S.

Founded in 2020, Polymarket is now reportedly courting a valuation of up to $15 billion, on the heels of receiving $2 billion in strategic funding from NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange at a $9 billion valuation.

In October, MetaMask launched multichain accounts, a feature that allows users to manage both EVM and non-EVM addresses, including on Solana. The wallet is planning to integrate a native MASK token, as its parent firm reportedly plans for an upcoming IPO.

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Strategy CEO Phong Le said part of the reason for establishing a $1.44 billion USD reserve was to alleviate investor concerns over the company’s health amid a Bitcoin slump. 

“We’re very much are a part of the crypto ecosystem and Bitcoin ecosystem. Which is why we decided a couple of weeks ago to start raising capital and putting US dollars on our balance sheet to get rid of this FUD,” said Le during CNBC’s Power Lunch on Friday.

On Monday, Strategy announced the $1.44 billion US dollar reserve, funded through a stock sale. The reserve is intended to maintain an amount sufficient to cover at least 12 months of dividends, and will eventually expand to cover a runway of 24 months, the firm said.

The new raise came amid concerns over whether Strategy could continue to service its debts and dividend payment obligations should the stock price fall too far.

“And it’s really this FUD,” Le said on Friday. 

“We weren’t going to have an issue to be able to pay our dividends, and we weren’t likely going to have to tap into selling our Bitcoin, but… There was FUD that was put out there that we wouldn’t be able to meet our dividend obligations, which causes people to pile into a short Bitcoin bet,” he said. 

“We just addressed that in eight and a half days we raised $1.44 billion — 21 months’ worth of dividend obligations, and we did it 1) to address the FUD, but 2) to show people that we’re still able to raise money in a Bitcoin downcycle.”

Related: Cantor slashes Strategy target by 60%, tells clients forced-sale fears are overblown

Last week, Le said that Strategy would only consider selling Bitcoin if its stock fell below net asset value and the company no longer had access to fresh capital. 

The company also launched a “BTC Credit” dashboard, which claims it currently has enough assets to service dividends for more than 70 years.

An analyst has pointed out where a key resistance could be located for Dogecoin, based on on-chain supply distribution data.

Dogecoin Has A Large Supply Cluster Present At $0.20

In a new post on X, analyst Ali Martinez has talked about where resistance lies for Dogecoin based on Glassnode’s Cost Basis Distribution (CBD). The CBD is an indicator that tells us about the amount of DOGE supply that was last acquired at the various price levels that the memecoin has visited in its history.

Below is the chart shared by Martinez that shows the recent CBD heatmap for Dogecoin.

As is visible in the graph, the Dogecoin CBD has flagged the zone around $0.20 as one where investors did some heavy buying. More specifically, over 11.7 billion tokens have their cost basis at this level.

Considering that DOGE is trading notably under the mark right now, all this supply would naturally be in the red. The asset rising to this level could cause a strong reaction from the investors, as these tokens will get back to their break-even.

Generally, holders in loss can be desperate for the price to reach back to their cost basis. Once the asset does rise to their acquisition level, some of these investors choose to sell, fearing that the rebound is only temporary. This can make large cost basis levels above the asset’s price potential zones of resistance.

Between the current price and $0.20, there aren’t any other regions in the CBD that are as dense with supply. Based on this, Martinez has noted, “$0.20 is the key resistance for Dogecoin.” It now remains to be seen whether DOGE will retest this level anytime soon.

In some other news, the memecoin has seen a spike in network activity recently, as the analyst has pointed out in another X post.

In the chart, the indicator shown is the Number of Active Addresses, which measures, as its name suggests, the daily number of addresses that are participating in some kind of transaction activity on the Dogecoin network.

It would appear that this indicator has registered a surge recently, with a peak 71,589 addresses making transfers on the blockchain. This is the largest spike that the metric has observed since September.

The trend suggests that attention has returned back to the Dogecoin network after a slump, but only time will tell whether this activity pertains to accumulation or distribution.

DOGE Price

At the time of writing, Dogecoin is trading around $0.138, down over 7% in the last week.

Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) jumped nearly 100% today, after CoinDesk journalist Ian Allison appeared at Binance Blockchain Week Dubai wearing a vintage Terra Luna logo t-shirt while moderating interviews with executives from Mastercard, Ripple, and TON.

Terra Luna Is Back? Not Quite

Traders had already been rotating into LUNC ahead of a scheduled network upgrade supported by Binance. 

The exchange confirmed it would pause deposits and withdrawals during the upgrade, signalling strong operational backing from the world’s biggest trading venue.

That announcement pushed volume sharply higher, setting the stage for fast speculative flows.

Token burn trackers reported aggressive supply reduction recently, including hundreds of millions of LUNC removed from circulation in the past week. Community messaging amplified the theme, reviving the idea of a shrinking float.

This narrative resurfaced at the same moment as Allison’s shirt went viral, reinforcing the perception of a coordinated cultural comeback.

The Do Kwon Effect

The rally also coincides with renewed attention on Do Kwon’s ongoing sentencing proceedings in the United States. Traders view developments toward legal conclusion as a potential reset point, allowing LUNC to trade like a legacy meme asset rather than a distressed one.

As volume spiked and spot markets tightened, the narrative gained traction quickly.

Why the T-Shirt Moment Landed So Loudly

Terra’s collapse remains one of crypto’s most dramatic episodes, erasing billions in market value in 2022 and triggering regulatory crackdowns worldwide. Many in the industry still associate the logo with that moment — a symbol of excess, leverage, and systemic failure.

Seeing the design reappear on a main stage alongside established institutions added an unexpected emotional layer to the rally. It represented a strange throwback and also an emotional provocation.

Terra’s Ghosts Are Still Here

Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin unraveled three years ago, triggering contagion that spread into lending platforms, hedge funds, and later exchanges. Millions of investors were left underwater, and it drove the biggest crypto winter to date. 

Today’s rally simply shows that memory, speculation, and narrative still carry weight in crypto — sometimes more than fundamentals.

As LUNC surged, the sight of that shirt reminded markets how quickly sentiment can swing, even for a project once written off as irrecoverable.

VTB, Russia’s second-largest bank, has told clients it plans to let them buy and sell real cryptocurrencies through its brokerage service, with a target rollout in 2026 pending regulator approval.

According to the bank, the move would go beyond the derivative products that most Russian banks have offered so far. It is a clear shift toward opening traditional finance to digital assets, at least for now among wealthy clients.

Client Eligibility And Timetable

Reports have disclosed that VTB intends to begin with high-net-worth customers only. The bank set thresholds for its initial offering: clients with assets above $1.3 million or annual income over $649,000 would be eligible at first.

Andrey Yatskov, who heads VTB’s brokerage arm, said there is “sharp demand” from clients for access to actual crypto, not just paper products tied to token prices. The bank has picked 2026 as the planned start year, but it made that clear the launch depends on regulators signing off.

Real Crypto, Not Just Contracts

Based on reports, the service would allow ownership of the underlying coins — not merely derivative contracts or token-linked notes. That is a significant distinction in Russia, where until recently banks were limited to offering exposure through derivative instruments.

Allowing customers to hold coins directly would require legal and compliance work, from custody arrangements to anti-money-laundering controls. Those steps are on the critical path before any retail expansion can happen. Potential Market Signals

VTB has also given investors a sense of how it views crypto as an asset class. The bank recommended a 7% allocation to crypto for some investor profiles, and its internal forecasts have mentioned medium-term Bitcoin price targets in the $200,000–$250,000 range under favorable conditions.

If VTB moves forward, it could be the first major Russian bank to operate in this way — a signal that some parts of the financial sector see token ownership as something to be offered through mainstream channels.Regulatory Hurdles And Geopolitics

The plan is not risk free. Russian regulation of crypto is still evolving, and any permit to offer direct trading will require approval from the relevant authorities. Sanctions and other geopolitical pressures could alter timelines or force changes to how the service is structured. Compliance teams will need to reconcile domestic rules with international restrictions that affect many big banks operating in or dealing with Russia.

For now, the rollout remains conditional. VTB’s timeline, client criteria, and product design all hinge on legal clarifications and regulator consent. Market participants and clients will likely follow announcements from the Bank of Russia and other agencies to judge how soon broader access might come.

Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView