With crypto’s multi-month slump accelerating into a free fall last week, bulls frantically grabbed for technical cues, or perhaps yarn about the explosion of a leveraged hedge fund that could signal a final bottom for this bear market.
Perhaps the ultimate sign of a bottom might be the cheers coming from those who have been staunchly bearish on bitcoin as the price rose from $0 to more than $100,000 during its 16-year lifespan.
Over the years, the Financial Times has certainly stood above all traditional publications in its staunch opposition to bitcoin and crypto. The London paper’s team of truly talented writers have never seemed to waver from a steadfast stance, and this week was their moment.
“Bitcoin is still about $69,000 too high,” was the headline of a Sunday essay by the FT’s Jemima Kelly that wonderfully summed up Kelly’s and the FT’s general sentiment over the last decade plus. [The FT subsequently changed the headline to “$70,000 too high” after bitcoin rose overnight].
“Ever since its creation, bitcoin has been on a journey that will end, splashed on the ground,” Kelly wrote. “This week has shown us that the supply of ‘greater fools’ that bitcoin relies on is drying up,” she continued. “The adventures that have kept crypto afloat are turning out to be just that. People are starting to wake up to the fact that there is no bottom to the value of anything based on nothing but thin air.”
Earlier this week, as the price of bitcoin fell below the $76,000 average cost basis for BTC financial giant Strategy (MSTR), the FT’s Craig Coben published, “Strategy’s long road to nowhere.”
With the stock already down about 80% from its late-2024 all-time high, Coben declared in February 2026: “Management has no safe choices – only different paths to destroy shareholder value … it’s hard to see the case for buying into a vehicle that has simply broken even on its investments over five years.”
“Like a giant mastodon stuck in the tar pits of La Brea,” Coben concluded. “The strategy is finding a way out.”
Peter Schiff is with us
With gold – despite some recent volatility – continuing in a major bull cycle, longtime gold bug and bitcoin critic Peter Schiff was also feeling his oats.
“According to Michael Saylor, bitcoin is the best performing asset in the world,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Yet Strategy has invested over $54 billion in bitcoin over the past five years and as of now the company is down about 3% on that investment. I’m sure the losses over the next five years will be much bigger!”
“Bitcoin below $76,000, now worth 15 ounces of gold, down 59% from November 2021 high,” Schiff continued. “Bitcoin is in a long-term bear market priced in gold.”
Other signs
“I refuse to pick a bottom,” former hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry once said. “Monkeys spend all their time picking bottoms.”
As Hendry noted, it’s probably a good idea not to sweetly time your purchases for headlines like those seen in the FT this week. However, it is probably pretty safe to say that some kind of bottom process is underway.
In other news this week that would never come close to peaking, investor interest in Tether appears to be fading. With the crypto market still buoyant at the end of last year, it was reported that the stablecoin issuing giant was in talks to raise $15-$20 billion for as much as a $500 billion valuation.
However, according to a report in the FT on Tuesday, investors appear to be pushing back against that valuation, and the capital raising effort may only be in the range of around $5 billion.
For his part, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino told the FT that initial reports of a $15-$20 billion capital raise were a “misunderstanding” and that Tether had received plenty of interest at that $500 billion valuation.
Nevertheless, according to the report, investors have privately raised concerns about the high valuation. Things are fluid, the report continued, and a crypto rally could quickly change sentiment.
