Bearish Bets Surge as Bitcoin Slips Below $90K, With Open Interest Capped and Gold Drawing Flows

Traders are leaning defensive as Bitcoin hovers around $89,000—down 6.7% over the past week and roughly 1% in the last 24 hours—while prediction markets tilt decisively bearish. On Myriad, the probability of BTC sinking to $69,000 jumped to 30% today, up from 22% within the last day and 11.6% a week ago. That shift captures the mood: confidence in a clean reclaim of $90,000 has faded.

The key tell isn’t the headline price; it’s the absence of fresh risk capital. Aggregated derivatives open interest has been pinned near 240,000 to 265,000 BTC for about ten days. When OI stagnates into a range like this, rallies often struggle to sustain because there’s limited incremental leverage or spot demand to propel the move. As Georgii Verbitskii, founder of non-custodial Web3 platform TYMIO, notes, larger players appear uninterested at these levels, with capital parked defensively amid geopolitical noise.

That macro noise has been costly. Bitcoin’s trend structure looked constructive to start 2026—higher highs and higher lows—culminating in a push to $97,000 on January 15. At that point, Myriad users assigned an 87% chance to a run at $100,000. Then came a harsh reset: U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to annex Greenland and impose tariffs on European countries sparked a sharp drawdown that wiped out $865 million in positions in 24 hours. After Trump later paused those plans, BTC snapped back to $90,000, but the weekend whipsaw culled roughly $2 billion in positions in short order, reinforcing Bitcoin’s increasingly macro-reactive behavior this year.

Rotation is also at play. Gold has the safe-haven spotlight, absorbing inflows that might otherwise chase BTC’s “digital gold” narrative. Verbitskii frames this as risk repricing rather than panic—a temporary phase where Bitcoin simply isn’t the preferred hedge. That echoes what we see in altcoins: even higher-quality names are under pressure. Ryan Li, CEO and co-founder of AI insights platform Surf, highlights Avalanche, which is down roughly 66% since September despite partnerships with JPMorgan and WisdomTree—an illustration of how unforgiving flows have been outside BTC.

Here’s how I’m thinking about it: the market doesn’t need a new story; it needs new sponsors. Until open interest breaks out of its 240k–265k BTC band alongside evidence of spot-led demand, price will likely chop and sentiment will remain fragile. A durable reclaim of $90,000 backed by rising OI and breadth would indicate larger buyers are returning. Absent that, prediction markets will continue to skew cautious, and gold will keep siphoning the safe-haven bid.

Verbitskii’s point is the practical one. This doesn’t read like a regime collapse, just a reset in who gets paid to take risk right now. When the big balance sheets decide the repricing is done, this tape can change quickly. Until then, patience tends to outperform bravado.