Bitcoin buyers will drive price back to $100,000, analyst says

Bitcoin’s supply and demand dynamics seen to boost prices back to $100,000..
Investors are spooked by record AI spending and are hedging for downside scenarios.

Crypto traders are set to push the price of Bitcoin back to $100,000, according to Shawn Young, chief analyst at MEXC Research.

His argument? Yes, buyers aren’t scooping up digital assets at the same volumes they did a few months ago, but they’re still buying more Bitcoin than what’s mined each day.

“This creates a net-positive supply dynamic that could trigger a rebound in the near term,” Young told DL News.

His optimism offers a counterweight to the pessimism that’s swept across crypto markets since October. In that time, cryptocurrencies have lost $2 trillion, about half, of their total value. Bitcoin has lost 46% of its value and has traded around $68,000 for most of February.

Bitcoin price.

It will get worse, some analysts warn. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike McGlone even sees the price of Bitcoin shaving 85% of its value and ending up trading as low as $10,000.

His argument is that surging stocks have zapped the market of volatility at the same time as gold and silver have outperformed Bitcoin as a safe haven asset. That, combined with the industry seemingly losing faith in US President Donald Trump’s crypto boosterism, will drive the price lower, McGlone argued.

Others, like Ben Harvey, researcher at crypto investment firm Keyrock, say Bitcoin’s next move up or down won’t be determined by crypto, but by macroeconomic factors such as the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates and institutional investors buying into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

Big tech bubble?

Bitcoin’s downturn and that of most cryptocurrencies come amid a broader selloff of technology stocks.

Fears of an artificial intelligence spending bubble have triggered a surge in the trading of credit default swaps, according to Bloomberg data. Credit default swaps are a type of sophisticated financial contract. They were barely traded a year ago.

These contracts act like insurance, paying out if a company cannot repay its debt. Almost $900 million of Alphabet’s debt and nearly $700 million of Meta’s debt are now tied to these contracts.

This means that hedge funds increasingly use these derivatives to protect themselves in downside scenarios. In other words, investors are hedging against a major market selloff that could also drag down Bitcoin’s price.

Dubbed the “AI scare trade,” tech stocks have been hammered since January. BlackRock’s flagship tech ETF, which tracks industry leaders like Microsoft, Oracle, and Palantir, is down just over 23% year-to-date.

Analysts expect the largest tech firms to borrow up to $400 billion this year, up from $165 billion in 2025. They will use the capital to invest heavily in AI data centres that could cost trillions of dollars overall. That increases investors’ risks if AI projects don’t pay off.

Bitcoin trades like a technology stock and thus “bears the brunt of liquidity or capital shifts,” Young said.