A reader on X asked about . Little has changed since March.
Adam Taggart Asks About Bitcoin
Whoa — Bitcoin is in the process of puking, down nearly 6% and now under $70k Crypto folks: your thoughts on what’s driving this?
Technically, this is just a continuation of what I posted in March.
Bitcoin Is Coiled for a Big Move. But Which Way?
Please consider my March 14, 2026, warning: Bitcoin Is Coiled for a Big Move. But Which Way?
Bitcoin Weekly Chart
The weekly chart shows the rising wedge and a symmetrical triangle. The symmetrical triangle is a continuation pattern of the existing trend. That would imply lower.
The E-Wave weekly chart is also clean. Wave 5 down would be expected.
And if a big top is in, this could just be wave 1 down. By that, I mean waves 1-5 form a bigger wave 1. With Wave 2 up expected then wave 3 down, etc.
Wave 3’s or sometimes 5’s are the biggest waves. So if we are in a huge top setup, Bitcoin could easily crash all the way to 10,000 or even 1,000.
I won’t make any such calls. But my technical expectation is for 5 waves down now, then a rally. Five waves down would be to 50,000 which is also strong weekly support.
I have been accused of writing about Bitcoin after big moves. But this is the second time I have written in advance expecting a move lower.
Wave 4 in the new chart gave a head fake higher. By that I mean the symmetrical triangle broke up, not down. But the head fake did not last long and wave 4 violated no E-Wave rules.
The Great Repricing
Michael Green AKA Professor Plum on X, has a fascinating post on the future of Bitcoin.
Please consider The Great Re-Pricing: When the “Digital Gold” Bill Came Due by Professor Plum.
The bitcoin “Store of Value” trade has fundamentally broken in two. Unlike gold, which is mined with energy, but then remains “gold” regardless of how much mining energy is expended, bitcoin requires continual energy expenditure to maintain the bitcoin network. The mining stops and bitcoin stops; the mining slows, and the bitcoin network’s “safety” and performance degrade.
The “Jaws of Death” (bitcoin’s insolvency)
In the “Post-Capitalist” era of zero interest rates and surplus energy, we believed we could solve financial problems with code. We ignored the Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy. Maintaining a digital ledger requires a constant injection of ordered energy.
This chart is the receipt for that entropy [Lead Chart]
- The Divergence: Since October 2025, bitcoin’s price has crashed ~27%.
- The Stickiness: The network Hashrate (the cost to maintain the bitcoin network) has only dropped ~5-8%.
The miners are currently doing the same amount of work for 27% less revenue. They have billions in sunk capex, and as long as bitcoin remains above the marginal cash cost of mining (~$85K), they will keep mining. This, in itself, is nothing new. It has always been the case that mining has periods of unprofitability. With an “all in” (including depreciation cost) of roughly $130K, the average public miner is now deeply unprofitable and selling everything they mine to generate cash. All else equal, the hashrate must fall, and miners must move to lower cost regions as equipment depreciates and existing power purchase agreements (PPAs) roll off into new, higher pricing.
The “Passive Bid” Has Diminished
At the same time that network risks are rising, the demand side is diminishing. Bitcoin is not temporarily flow-driven. It is necessarily flow-driven.
For two years, the ETF complex provided a mindless, price-agnostic bid for bitcoin. That tap has slowed radically, and now bitcoin must find a new untapped bid. My hunch is that 2026 will start with “value” buyers, rebalancers, and tax-loss harvesting from 2025 returning to bitcoin ETFs and driving prices higher for a time.
Bitcoin: Requires a massive, continuous calorie burn (electricity) just to prevent the network from collapsing. As energy prices rise (thanks to AI and the exhaustion of the 2010s surplus), the cost to maintain your “digital gold” rises.
Gold: Is chemically inert. It sits in a vault. Its maintenance cost is effectively zero and largely unaffected by existing value.
Bitcoin was the “marginal buyer” of energy in an era of surplus. That energy has finally found a “structural buyer” in AI. As the “Pig” (demographic demand) enters the “Python” (limited infrastructure), bitcoin is a luxury being squeezed out of the grid. The market has begun to realize that you cannot store generational wealth in an asset that competes with AI for power. You store it in the asset that exists outside the energy grid.
Did Bitcoin “Digital Gold” Just Become Fool’s Gold?
On January 11, 2026 I asked Did Bitcoin “Digital Gold” Just Become Fool’s Gold? I commented on Professor Plum’s post.
Bitcoin miners have better things to do than mine Bitcoin.
[Linking to Professor Plum’s post I commented] That’s a well thought out post and one of the best I have ever seen on Bitcoin.
That does not mean he is right, but so far the thesis fits.
Ten Key Points
- The bitcoin “Store of Value” trade has fundamentally broken in two. Unlike gold, which is mined with energy, but then remains “gold” regardless of how much mining energy is expended, bitcoin requires continual energy expenditure to maintain the bitcoin network.
- Maintaining a digital ledger requires a constant injection of ordered energy.
- The miners are currently doing the same amount of work for 27% less revenue. They have billions in sunk capex, and as long as bitcoin remains above the marginal cash cost of mining (~$85K), they will keep mining. This, in itself, is nothing new. It has always been the case that mining has periods of unprofitability.
- The difference this time is that bitcoin miners are no longer using “surplus” energy.
- AI datacenters pay 3-4x the revenue per kilowatt as bitcoin mining — and the miners are switching.
- Another “halving” in 2028 will reduce revenue per hash by 50% unless the bitcoin price increases by 100%.
- The “Passive Bid” Has Diminished. For two years, the ETF complex provided a mindless, price-agnostic bid for bitcoin. That tap has slowed radically, and now bitcoin must find a new untapped bid.
- Absent endogenous cash flows (e.g. earnings, transaction fee share, dividends), bitcoin has no stabilizing feedback loop—only reflexive ones. Further declines do not summon value buyers; they merely test the resilience of belief.
- Bitcoin requires a massive, continuous calorie burn (electricity) just to prevent the network from collapsing. As energy prices rise (thanks to AI and the exhaustion of the 2010s surplus), the cost to maintain your “digital gold” rises.
- Gold is chemically inert. It sits in a vault. Its maintenance cost is effectively zero and largely unaffected by existing value.
Halving – Point Number 6
The last Bitcoin halving occurred on April 19, 2024, reducing the block reward for miners from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, marking the fourth halving event in Bitcoin’s history and decreasing the supply of new bitcoins
The next Bitcoin halving is projected for mid-2028, around April 17-29, when the block reward for miners will be cut from 3.125 BTC to 1.5625 BTC.
The next halving will reduce revenue per hash by 50% unless the bitcoin price increases by 100 percent.
The Bitcoin belief is twofold (price follows the hash rate, and the hash rate always goes up).
That’s not always true. But over the long haul, it’s generally been true. Regardless, in an energy sensitive environment with demand coming from AI, halving isn’t what it used to be.
“Meanwhile, if miners have better things to do with their energy than mine Bitcoin, the hash rate only has one way to go.“
That was my comment in January.
Bitcoin Hash Rate vs Price 2026-06-02
America’s Biggest Bitcoin Miners Are Pivoting to AI
On December 9, 2025, Wired reported America’s Biggest Bitcoin Miners Are Pivoting to AI
In the face of a profitability crisis, industrial-scale bitcoin miners are transforming their data centers into AI factories.
The recent decline in the price of bitcoin to around $85,000—a 30 percent drop from its 2025 peak—has created a perfect storm that threatens the profitability of all but the most cost-efficient mines.
“The economics are terrible today,” says Charles Chong, VP of strategy at the crypto advisory firm BlockSpaceForce and former director of strategy at the bitcoin mining company Foundry. “If I buy a bitcoin mining machine today, I don’t know if I can make the money back.”
A dramatic drop in bitcoin mining activity could increase the feasibility of what’s known as a 51 percent attack, whereby somebody hijacks bitcoin transactions by controlling the majority of the computing power directed at the network. For now, such an attack remains prohibitively expensive. But as the reward for bitcoin mining continues to fall every four years, the fear is that mining will no longer be economical. “It’s definitely a threat—and a serious one,” claims Chong, the BlockSpaceForce executive. “But how soon is an open question.”
Others are betting that bitcoin mining will become the sole preserve of sovereign states—like Bhutan, El Salvador, and the US—that cannot abide any threat to the value of the national bitcoin stockpiles they have accumulated. “Maybe people will mine at a loss,” says Demirors, “because it’s a matter of national security.”
Mother of All Crypto Winters
Repeating my March warning, If a big top is in, this could just be wave 1 down. By that, I mean waves 1-5 form a bigger wave 1.
Note the large 1 next to the 5 on my lead chart.
If that pattern plays out, a larger wave 2 would start in the 40,000 to 50,000 range (or lower because wave 5s can extend).
A larger wave 3 down would then start. That would be the mother of all crypto winters.
Summation
Little has changed either technically or fundamentally since my last Bitcoin post on March 14.
Bitcoin is now in wave 5 down. In March, I was discussing wave 4 up, expecting wave 5 we are now clearly in.
The symmetrical wave 4 triangle briefly broke out to much Bitcoin cheering but that collapsed in wave 5.
Fundamentally, I side with Professor Plum. Technically, the pattern is playing out as noted in March.