On Thursday, Bitcoin fell nearly 9% toward the $81,314 area after a brief 2.6% rebound, slipping below near‑term supports. Analysts Ted Pillows and Rekt Capital warn the loss of the 100‑week EMA and a retest of the Macro Triangle bottom near $82,500 raise downside risks, with history implying up to a 76.88% drawdown toward $30,000 if patterns repeat.

On January 30, Bitcoin dropped to $81,119 as derivatives data showed a cascade of forced long closures. According to on-chain analyst Axel Adler Jr., long-liquidation dominance reached roughly 97% (30-day average 31.4%) while perpetual funding stayed positive at 43.2% annualized, suggesting leverage may not be fully cleared. BTC last traded near $82,968.

Between Wednesday and Thursday, Bitcoin fell about 10%, retesting $81,000 for the first time in over two months. On Friday, the 2‑month options delta skew jumped to 17% and US‑listed spot BTC ETFs posted $2.7 billion in net outflows since Jan. 16, increasing the odds of a break under $80,000. Traders are reassessing leverage and key support.

Bitcoin was originally conceived as a "digital gold" style store of value designed to benefit from de-dollarisation and inflation, but recent market action shows investors favouring physical metals instead. Over roughly the past year, gold has climbed about 55% and silver around 150%, while BTC has traded largely sideways. Analysts Himanshu Sinha and Doctor Profit argue that central bank gold demand and the gold/BTC ratio both suggest gold may keep outperforming and that Bitcoin is currently behaving more like a speculative risk asset.

Doctor Profit reiterated on 2026-01-?? that Bitcoin’s gold ratio pattern is nearing the 0.11 BTC-per-ounce level, which previously signaled market bottoms near $50,000 to $60,000. Michael van de Poppe countered that Bitcoin’s RSI versus gold and a depressed Z-Score hint at a looming rotation back into BTC despite the coin trading at $83,435 after 2.2% daily and 7% weekly losses.

Norway's sovereign wealth fund lifted its indirect exposure to Bitcoin by 149%, reaching 9,573 BTC by 2025 through positions in publicly traded companies. The fund does not hold Bitcoin directly, relying instead on stakes in firms such as MicroStrategy, Coinbase, MARA, and Block. A rise of this scale likely reflects portfolio construction choices rather than a direct bet on BTC.

On Jan. 30, 2026, analyst Liam 'Akiba' Wright updated his medium-term Bitcoin bear thesis calling for a potential move toward $49,000, noting that key network and flow metrics look more stressed than when he first outlined it in November. While Bitcoin trades in the low $80,000s, he points to extremely weak fee contribution to miner revenue, negative year-to-date ETF flows exceeding $1 billion, and miners pivoting into AI and HPC hosting as signs of underlying fragility. Wright argues that these structural pressures are building tension beneath the price and could act as a liquidity magnet if Bitcoin eventually drops into the high-$40,000 zone.

On January 30, 2026, CryptoQuant reported that short-term Bitcoin holders moved about 35,100 BTC to exchanges within 24 hours while sitting on unrealized losses. The firm noted this inflow often reflects market stress and near-term sell pressure, though a transfer does not necessarily mean the coins were immediately sold.