Bitcoin trading activity exploded on Monday with trading volume soaring 222% to $55.3 billion, with Arthur Hayes, CIO at Maelstrom Fund, predicting a sharp correction that could see the price fall to $70,000 before an eventual rise to $250,000 this year. .

The Alpha cryptocurrency is currently trading just above the $99,000 level, down 8.67% from its all-time high on January 20 of around $108,000, according to CoinGecko data. He appears.

Meanwhile, forced liquidations in the cryptocurrency derivatives sector led to an exodus of about $850 million over the past 24 hours, with long positions accounting for the majority of losses, Coinglass reported. Data He appears.

Hayes warns The world fears an imminent “mini-financial crisis” that could lead to a correction, which would link market weakness to broader concerns about American technological dominance. Hayes predicted that a “resumption of money printing” is also on the horizon.

for him analysis He refers to the Chinese artificial intelligence company Deepseek Recent breakthrough As a potential catalyst for global investors to reevaluate their overweight positions in technology and US bonds.

Complex difficulties

Profit taking appears to be driving the recent market movements, according to Data From Bloomberg shows coordinated selling pressure around Bitcoin's peak of $108,786 as of January 20.

Concentrated selling pressure was also observed in the $104,000-$108,000 range, with Bitcoin's 8.2% weekly decline outpacing the broader cryptocurrency market's 5.50% decline. This divergence, coupled with the spike in volume, indicates strategic profit-taking and not fundamental weakness, as Bloomberg analysts claim.

The rise in trading volume to $55.3 billion indicates widespread adjustments in positions, according to Bloomberg Data. This comes as the Bitcoin network's mining difficulty recorded its first significant decline since September 2024, it recently reported. numbers From the CloverPool Bitcoin mining pool.

A shift in network dynamics can be expected, given the 2% difficulty drop that comes after eight consecutive adjustments on the positive side.

Bitcoin mining difficulty adjustments tend to result in lower computational power on the network side, which increases bearish signals in the short term, according to Bloomberg analysis. The decline to 108.11 trillion from the previous record of 110.45 trillion suggests that miners may be adjusting their operations in response to recent price movements and concerns about profitability.

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More broadly, the cryptocurrency market is showing signs of stress Bitcoin Poor performance compared to other indices in the digital asset space. While the global cryptocurrency market fell by 5.5% over the past week, Bitcoin fell by 8.2%, indicating increased selling pressure on the major asset.

Despite the bearish near-term outlook, Hayes maintains an optimistic outlook on the long term, suggesting that a resumption of monetary easing could push Bitcoin to $250,000 by the end of the year.

Hayes' predictions come as Bitcoin's market capitalization reaches $1.97 trillion, retaining its position as the leading digital asset by market capitalization.

Modified by Stacey Elliott.