Bitcoin Price Holds $70K Amid Inflation Fears

Bitcoin price is clinging to the $70,000 level this week after a decisive rejection from its recent swing high, and the question on every trader's mind is simple: is this a shakeout or the start of something worse? The selloff, which came after BTC briefly tagged $76,000, landed in the middle of a broader macro storm — crude oil spikes, equity market turbulence, and fresh inflation anxiety that has traders second-guessing every risk position they hold.

A Rejection at $76K — What the Chart Is Saying

Tuesday's swing told the whole story pretty fast. Bitcoin peaked near $76,000, got slapped back, and within hours traders were watching the $70,000 handle evaporate too — at least temporarily. That kind of two-step rejection tends to get technicians talking, and chartered market technician Aksel Kibar was among the first to put a name on what he was seeing.

Kibar pointed to a Bitcoin price structure that looks troublingly familiar: a bearish rising wedge forming in the same zone where a near-identical pattern appeared between December 2025 and early January 2026. That prior wedge resolved to the downside. If history rhymes, the current pattern could test the $73,700 to $76,500 support area before the next directional move clarifies.

Back on January 18, 2026, Kibar had warned publicly that BTC would need to respect its year-long moving average as part of what he called 'the chop and search for a base.' That note aged well. The market has been doing exactly that — chopping, testing, retesting — and the latest rejection from $76K fits neatly into that thesis.

The pattern can become a rising wedge, usually bearish, in an attempt to test the $73.7K–$76.5K support area.

Why Is Macro Killing the BTC Mood Right Now?

Here's the part that doesn't get enough attention in purely technical takes: Bitcoin isn't selling off in a vacuum. The selloff tracked almost beat-for-beat with sharp losses across US equities, and the driver wasn't anything crypto-native. It was crude oil prices — specifically the market's anxiety about what escalating US-Israel-Iran tensions mean for energy costs and, downstream, for inflation.

The Kobeissi Letter — a widely followed macro markets commentary — weighed in directly, noting that Trump administration policy choices are creating material uncertainty around the inflation trajectory in the US. The read there is straightforward: higher energy costs feed into consumer prices, the Fed has less room to cut, risk assets suffer. Bitcoin, whatever narratives are spun about it being a hedge, trades like a risk asset in moments of acute macro stress. That's just the empirical reality.

For BTC holders, this macro context matters more than the chart patterns right now. If oil keeps climbing on geopolitical risk, the correlation between equities and crypto isn't going away anytime soon. You can have the cleanest technical setup in the world and still get steamrolled by a macro wave.

Current decisions by the Trump administration could impact inflation in ways that are creating significant uncertainty for markets.

What Glassnode's Options Data Actually Shows

Strip out the noise and look at the derivatives data — that's where the cleaner signal lives. Glassnode Bitcoin options analysts put out their BTC Options Weekly report this week, and the conclusion was measured but meaningful: Bitcoin has 'reintegrated its range' after what they described as a short-lived deviation above the $75,000 level.

The specific detail worth understanding here is the short gamma dynamic at $75K. When Bitcoin broke above that level briefly, dealers who had sold options were caught short gamma — meaning they needed to buy BTC as it rose to hedge their books, which amplified the move. That gamma has since been 'unwound,' per Glassnode's analysts. Translation: the mechanical buying pressure that helped push Bitcoin toward $76K is now gone. The next attempt to break that level won't have the same tailwind.

This is actually important context for anyone trying to time a re-entry. The range Glassnode defines puts $70,000 as the lower anchor and $75,000 to $76,500 as the ceiling. Until something changes fundamentally — in macro conditions or in on-chain accumulation patterns — that's the arena BTC is likely to stay in. Grinding, frustrating, directionally unclear. Sound familiar?

Does $70K Hold — or Are BTC Bulls Running Out of Room?

The bull case still exists. It just requires more patience than most retail traders are willing to extend. $70,000 has now been tested multiple times since the broader correction began, and each test has found buyers. That's not nothing. Repeat support tests can signal accumulation just as easily as they signal exhaustion — the difference is in volume and in where those buyers are located on the on-chain cost basis.

The bear case is simpler: Bitcoin is forming lower highs ($76K couldn't hold, prior peaks were higher), macro conditions are hostile, and the options market has lost the gamma squeeze fuel that powered the last breakout attempt. If equity selling deepens and oil stays elevated, there's nothing structurally stopping a test of lower support levels.

Call it a coin flip at current levels — but a coin flip with macro winds blowing against it. The burden of proof right now is on the bulls to show that $70,000 is more than just a round number that traders defend out of habit.