Bitcoin bearish sentiments continue to dominate the market after prices fell below $80,000 on January 31, resulting in a new wave of market liquidations. Interestingly, a pseudonymous analyst with the username CryptoMe has identified an “air pocket” in the current price structure, possibly pointing to the downside purpose of this recent price drop.
Bitcoin Now Below the $80,000 Support Zone – What Now?
In one QuickTake post on January 31, CryptoMe draws attention to an existing price vacuum between $73,000 – $80,000, as confirmed by three different market metrics. This observation is important when anticipating Bitcoin’s downside targets given the currently elevated market fears following the latest price drop.
According to CryptoMe, liquidity levels in Binance’s spot order book showed a concentration of limit buy orders between $73,000 and $80,000 that formed between late October and early November. Despite the price increase from $80,000 to around $100,000 at the end of Q4 2025, the price zone of the liquidity cluster remained untouched. Therefore, the zone is likely to act as a price magnet in the short term if bearish momentum continues, as markets often gravitate to areas of unfilled liquidity during periods of heightened volatility.
Another on-chain metric that supports the existence of an air pocket between $73,000 – $80,000 is the Unspent Transaction Output (UTXO) price histogram. Every Bitcoin transaction consumes existing UTXOs and creates new ones; therefore, UTXOs are a good measure of on-chain transaction activity. As seen in the chart above, the sparse UTXO density between $73,000 and $80,000 suggests that a small number of transactions have occurred within this price range. So investors have failed to establish a cost basis that would prevent further price decline as prices have now fallen below $80,000.
The final metric highlighted by CryptoMe is the Spot ETF Investor Average Cost, which currently stands at $79,000. Following the launch of the Bitcoin Spot ETFs in January 2024, Bitcoin has so far failed to trade below its realized price. Considering all three metrics, it is likely that Bitcoin is heading towards the $73,000 price mark, which the market has not visited since April 2025. Furthermore, such a decline would represent a 40% devaluation from the current market high.
Bitcoin price overview
At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $78,558, reflecting a 6.5% increase in the past 24 hours. Meanwhile, the total trading volume increased by 37.15% and was valued at $74.67 billion.