Bitcoin panic spreads. What do I expect for the short term?

With every stock market crash (and cryptocurrency crash), you learn some new terminology. As mentioned earlier this week, there were mentions of “peak AI” in the business press while I’m now also hearing about Bitcoin’s new zones. These are called “max pain” (logic as we experienced a drop of about 30% in one month), and there’s also the “discount zone,” because some analysts think the largest digital currency is now really cheap.

Furthermore, there are some wonderfully interesting conspiracy theories about what will happen next.

1060 days

Last week’s decline had, of course, been predicted for a long time, primarily due to the fact that historically, a Bitcoin bull run peaks around 1,060 to 1,100 days after significant lows, which would suggest that the end of this cycle is quite mathematically consistent. We’ve already seen the “strong move” I predicted in early October, and at this point, it’s simply unclear where support lies for Bitcoin.

My own personal opinion
The U.S. govt should engineer a sharp price decline, forcing Saylor into liquidation
Then the U.S. govt can stock up on BTC to back up the $USD as a reserve currency
I think driving price to $30k would do the trick pic.twitter.com/qwMCSYviOt

— Peter Brandt (@PeterLBrandt) November 20, 2025

According to Peter Brandt, the US government could cause a further capitulation and then pick up Bitcoins cheaper themselves. This could happen in two ways. Either they force the price of Bitcoin down further by gradually selling around 10,000 Bitcoins each week (which would also cause the market cap of Strategy, the largest Bitcoin hodler, to drop), or they make a deal with BlackRock that would then cause an outflow from their Bitcoin ETF. At least, those are the “conspiracy theories” currently circulating on the internet.

Upward

Suppose Bitcoin falls below $66,000 next month: at that point Michael Saylor, founder of Strategy, will indeed be faced with a major problem for his company, as he will then be facing losses for the first time since 2020. According to Brandt, the US government could do a very good thing at that point by acquiring Strategy and banking on Bitcoin’s long-term potential. We’ll see what happens.

As for me, I’m watching from the sidelines. A brief upward surge cannot be ruled out in the short term.