I predicted Bitcoin $BTC falling to $49k this year and January delivered some very concerning red flags
My $49k Bitcoin bear thesis, a January check-in, the plumbing is flashing while price bleeds
I wrote my medium-term $49,000 bear thesis in late November with one simple idea, Bitcoin still moves in cycles, and the next real “this is the low” moment tends to arrive when miner economics and flows line up at the same time.
It is now Jan. 30, 2026, and the honest update is this, the variables I care about look more stressed than they did when I published, and the tape has not delivered the kind of panic price print that makes those variables matter to everyone at once.
Somewhat paradoxically, my ‘medium-term bear thesis' was intended to be long-term bullish. The idea being that we could get a short, sharp bear market with max pain followed by a sustained, multi-year bull run. However, the price isn't quite matching with the signals right now.
Bitcoin is hovering around the low $80,000s (after falling to $81,000 overnight) as I write this, which means my high-$40ks zone has not even come into view yet.
That disconnect is the story.
Because beneath the price, the parts of the system that pay for Bitcoin’s security, and the parts that move institutional size, are acting like winter already arrived
