On Polymarket, one of the largest prediction platforms in crypto, traders are no longer debating whether Bitcoin will set fresh all-time highs this year. The new question is how deeply the market might retrace before 2025 begins. The shift in tone has been fast, sharp and data-driven rather than emotional.
A New Consensus Emerges: $90,000 Is Now the Battleground
The most traded contracts on Polymarket suggest a clear pivot toward downside risk. The platform now assigns a 68% probability that Bitcoin ends the year below $90,000, compared with only 22% odds that it will reclaim $120,000 or higher.
Bets on ultra-high price targets — $150,000, $170,000 or even $200,000 — still exist but have shrunk to statistical outliers. More than $54.75 million has now moved through the Bitcoin prediction pool, signaling that this isn’t a fringe or thin market — it is institutional-scale participation.
Fear Is Not Coming From Crypto, but From Outside of It
The selling pressure that dragged Bitcoin below $95,000 didn’t begin inside the digital-asset market. The recoil in AI-focused Big Tech stocks created a chain reaction across risk assets, and crypto absorbed that shock like it often does: violently and quickly.
Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu told CNBC that the decline reflects a liquidity shortage rather than a loss of faith. According to him, investors are raising cash to plug holes elsewhere, and Bitcoin becomes one of the few assets liquid enough to convert instantly.
Traders Price in Pain — Analysts Look for the Inflection Point
While prediction markets are leaning bearish and liquidity is tight, not all analysts view the current zone as a prelude to further collapse. Trader Michaël van de Poppe highlighted that trading volume around the current price band is accelerating — something that has often occurred around macro bottoms.
Volumes are increasing in this area.
Absolutely bad vibes on markets, however, there are more and more signals flashing that we're nearing a bottom for $BTC.
Closing the CME gap tomorrow and reverse in the coming week would be great.
Things will take time.
The 4-year cycle…
He pointed out that a filled CME gap followed by stabilization next week would reinforce the idea that the sell-off is a late-cycle flush rather than the start of a trend reversal. Van de Poppe believes the four-year Bitcoin cycle remains intact and that fear often peaks just before the turning point.
A Market Without a Story — Waiting for Liquidity to Return
The contrast is stark: prediction markets are preparing for turbulence, analysts are searching for bottoming signals and investors who need cash are selling into weakness. No one is talking about euphoria or mania anymore — Bitcoin is trading in an environment defined solely by liquidity, not narrative. Until demand returns, markets will behave mechanically rather than emotionally.
Whether Bitcoin spends the rest of 2024 fighting to avoid deeper losses or quietly building the foundation for its next uptrend depends less on sentiment and more on when liquidity stops leaving — and starts coming back.