Bitcoin Slides 45% From October Record

Crypto News

Bitcoin (BTC) is changing hands near $63K, about 45% below its October 6 record, and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao says the weakness is not caused by a missing pool of capital. In an August 1 post, Zhao argued that even with crypto prices under pressure and bear-market conditions prevailing, substantial liquidity remains active and is searching for investable opportunities. He did not identify a preferred sector, but his comment frames the current drawdown as a confidence and allocation problem rather than a funding collapse. Zhao’s remark suggests that the market’s problem is not an absence of buyers, but an absence of conviction among buyers who remain on the sidelines for now. The market backdrop explains why investors are cautious. The decline is not a minor correction. It places BTC almost exactly halfway below the peak set on October 6, a drawdown severe enough to stall new commitments from allocators that typically require trend confirmation before adding volatile exposure. Bitcoin’s slide has erased roughly half of the value created during the previous expansion phase, leaving the largest digital asset far below its all-time-high and weighing on sentiment across the broader altcoin complex. Recent market data indicates that capital has not disappeared from the global system; it is simply avoiding crypto exposure while waiting for clearer catalysts. Zhao’s observation matters because he has long been one of the industry’s most visible exchange executives, and his reading of liquidity conditions often reflects conditions seen by large trading venues. If money is present but sidelined, the next move in Bitcoin may depend less on new retail inflows and more on whether macro investors decide that discounted crypto assets offer sufficient risk-adjusted upside. That question is central to the current cycle: the market has liquidity, but it has not yet chosen to deploy that liquidity into digital assets at scale.

The clearest example of where some of that capital is moving comes from Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya, who says he is avoiding AI chips and instead acquiring land, power access, and empty buildings suitable for data centers. Palihapitiya, a former senior Facebook executive and well-known SPAC sponsor, described the strategy as LPS — land, power, shell — and called it the most direct route to cash-on-cash returns. His argument is that local opposition is making permitted, energized sites scarce. Industry monitoring data showed that no fewer than 75 U.S. data-center efforts were blocked or postponed during early 2026, representing about $130 billion in value, while opposition groups expanded into 49 states. Legislative pressure has also intensified, with more than 300 state-level bills filed within six weeks and Maine narrowly missing a full ban. Palihapitiya’s own position reflects that scarcity. He said he and partner Anita Vlallian have secured almost six gigawatts of capacity, delivered in stages through 2029. He also pointed to the economics of former Bitcoin mining sites: Nasdaq-listed TeraWulf leased a 401-megawatt Kentucky location to Anthropic under a 20-year agreement expected to generate about $19 billion, according to the company’s SEC filing. The facility is not yet built, with power scheduled to begin flowing in late 2027 and full load expected in early 2028, yet the capital commitment is already in place. Bitcoin miners arrived earlier and already control cheap power, grid-connected land, and vacant structures, giving them an advantage in the conversion race. Palihapitiya said he would not repeat his earlier chip involvement, even though he estimated Nvidia’s non-exclusive licensing of Groq technology at roughly $20 billion, because hardware requires extreme speed, precise manufacturing, and scarce memory. Unlike speculative retail themes such as an AI trading bot, his bet is physical infrastructure: grid access, entitled land, and shells that can house compute regardless of which chipmaker wins.

COINOTAG’s analysis is that these two signals point to a capital-rotation question rather than a simple liquidity shortage. With the COINOTAG Fear and Greed Index at 27 out of 100, a Fear reading, and Bitcoin holding 69.7% of our tracked market, risk appetite remains defensive across a $1,800,846,997,743 universe. The official TeraWulf SEC filing shows that long-duration infrastructure cash flows can still attract commitments, even while crypto prices lag. If towns keep blocking data centers, scarcity may sustain the land-and-power trade. If sentiment stabilizes, however, sidelined money could rotate back into Bitcoin and selected altcoin assets, rather than chasing airdrop speculation.