Brandt says Bitcoin yet to bottom, Polymarket sees hope: Trade Secrets

Veteran trader Peter Brandt, who previously tipped that Bitcoin could fall as low as $60,000 in 2026, says the market likely hasn’t bottomed yet.

“Real bottom will not occur until October 2026,” Brandt tells Magazine.

In December, Brandt told Cointelegraph that, with Bitcoin trading near $88,000, he was targeting a third-quarter 2026 bottom around $60,000. Just over a month into 2026, on Feb. 6, Bitcoin slid to roughly $62,700. Now, Brandt says the market could flush even lower this year.

“It is actually spooky to me that Bitcoin has been so easy to forecast,” he says.

“The cyclic and parabolic behavior of Bitcoin surely cannot continue to be so predictable. I just think there will have to be a surprise to the repeating nature of price discovery,” he adds.

Brandt says in the near term, the price may chop “upwards,” but Bitcoin may also fall into the high $50,000s.

Crypto analyst Anup Dhungana recently warned in an X post that it will take “a long time” for Bitcoin to recover to its all-time high of $126,000, which it reached in October 2025.

Ether may chop around $2,000 for a little while: Arthur Hayes

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is bracing for more sideways chop in Ether over the near term.

“ETH, just like Bitcoin, will chop around these levels until USD liquidity increases,” Hayes tells Magazine.

Ether is trading at $1,941 as of publication, down 41.65% over the past 30 days, according to CoinMarketCap.

However, the founder of MN Trading Capital, Michaël van de Poppe, believes Ether presents a strong buying opportunity.

Van de Poppe said in a recent X post, “I don’t know a better opportunity to be looking at Ethereum.” He pointed to stablecoin transactions growing 200% over the past 18 months.

“Price follows narrative,” he said, pointing to a similar event unfolding in 2019.

Ether has attracted noticeably fewer bold price predictions from crypto analysts on social media lately.

Obviously, that hasn’t stopped the typical bulls from worshipping the asset. BitMine chair Tom Lee doubled down in an X post on Thursday, calling Ethereum “the future of finance.”

Crypto market participants are “fiercely bearish,” says Santiment

Crypto market participants are not feeling great about the market’s prospects as the new year kicks off, according to crypto sentiment platform Santiment.

“Crowd sentiment is fiercely bearish,” Santiment said in a recent report.

Santiment, using its social media tracking data on bullish and bearish comments from a wide range of vetted crypto accounts, said the ratio of bullish to bearish comments has “collapsed.”

“Historically, markets tend to bottom and bounce exactly when the crowd becomes convinced prices will fall further, similar to the mid-November crash,” Santiment said.

While it may look like everyone in the market is freaking out, Santiment, looking at history, says it may be more of a positive sign.

“High negativity is often a bullish signal,” Santiment says. “When the crowd is convinced prices will go lower, it is often the time to start looking for long entries,” Santiment adds.

In that case, we are set for a massive bull market, as sentiment is dire.

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures overall crypto market sentiment, has spent most of the year stuck in “fear” and “extreme fear” territory.

On Friday, it printed an “extreme fear” reading of 9, signalling that market participants remain highly cautious about deploying capital into crypto.

Meanwhile, CoinMarketCap’s Altcoin Season Index is flashing a “Bitcoin Season” reading of 28 out of 100. The indicator flips between “Altcoin Season” and “Bitcoin Season” depending on how the top 100 altcoins have performed against Bitcoin over the past 90 days.

What are the prediction markets saying?

Prediction market participants are majority bearish in the short term, with small hopes that the market will see strong upward growth by the end of this year.

The odds of Bitcoin ending February below $60,000 are at 41% on Polymarket, but the second-highest odds are that Bitcoin will reclaim $75,000 by the end of February at 29%. So, there’s still hope among a significant minority.

Longer term, Bitcoin has a 23% chance of reclaiming the $120,000 level in 2026, with just a 10% chance of the asset reaching above $150,000.

Pundits predict the best month for Bitcoin will be December, with 21% odds, and that the worst month has already passed in January. This goes against Bitcoin’s historical average performance over its best-performing months since 2013, with September the worst-performing month and November the best-performing month, according to CoinGlass.

Meanwhile, prediction traders are assigning a 23% chance of ETH falling to $1,600, and even higher odds at 76% that it will fall to $1,500 at some point in 2026. Ether’s lowest print of the year so far was $1,821 on Feb. 6.