Groundhog Day for Bitcoin: six more weeks of macro winter?
Bitcoin got its own Groundhog Day moment today as Punxsutawney Phil “saw his shadow” on the 140th Anniversary of the celebration and signaled six more weeks of winter, just after BTC slid to $74,000 in a sharp risk-off move.
The coincidence was fitting: a cocktail of forced liquidations, ETF outflows, and rising real yields suggested crypto could be facing an extended stretch of macro chill and elevated volatility heading into the March FOMC.
As of press time, Bitcoin has rebounded slightly to around $77,500 as a selloff in cross-asset risk met crypto’s 24/7 market structure.
Total crypto liquidations broke above $2 billion over the weekend, with over $800 million in the last 24 hours alone.
The durable takeaway for the next several weeks is that Bitcoin continues to behave like levered risk exposure when the discount rate and the dollar reprice quickly.
The episode is another stress test for the “digital gold” narrative. That is especially true when gold holds up better during risk-off stretches, and Bitcoin trades more in line with long-duration risk.
ETF flows and liquidation dynamics
Flows have been the clean, daily read-through on marginal demand.
Farside Investors’ ETF totals show repeated large net outflows into late January, including several sessions that removed hundreds of millions of dollars of spot demand in a single day.
That matters because when ETFs are redeeming, dips do not have the same mechanical bid. Any liquidation cascade can also travel further in thinner order books.
| Date (2026) | US spot BTC ETF total net flow (US$m) |
|---|---|
| Jan. 16 | -394.7 |
| Jan. 21 | -708.7 |
| Jan. 29 | -817.8 |
| Jan. 30 | -509.7 |
Macro anchors were also moving against duration-sensitive assets into that window.
Trading Economics put the U.S. 10-year nominal yield around 4.24–4.26% at the Jan. 30 close. StreetStats showed the 10-year TIPS real yield around 1.93% at the same reference point.
In practice, that real-yield level tends to raise the hurdle rate for assets priced on future adoption or liquidity conditions. It also tightens the range for speculative leverage to persist without periodic resets.
| Macro reference (Jan. 30 close) | Level |
|---|---|
| U.S. 10-year nominal yield | ~4.24–4.26% |
| U.S. 10-year real yield (TIPS) | ~1.93% |
Policy-regime uncertainty has been part of the repricing narrative.
Headlines around Kevin Warsh and Federal Reserve leadership, feed into a higher risk premium across markets tied to perceptions of Fed independence and the inflation path.
Crypto tends to express that uncertainty with more force because leverage is easier to apply. Liquidity also thins outside U.S. hours, and liquidations are automatic once collateral thresholds are hit.
That is why liquidations should be treated as the transmission mechanism rather than the root cause.
Macro repricing sets the direction. Price then falls into thinner liquidity, liquidations add supply, and the move extends.
What to watch into the March FOMC
For the “six more weeks” framing, the most actionable checklist is whether the marginal bid returns before the next major policy waypoint.
In a 2- to 6-week window:
- Sustained ETF inflows would be the clearest mechanical shift. That means not a single green day, but a run that offsets the late-January pace of redemptions.
- Whether real yields drift lower from the ~2% area, which would reduce discount-rate pressure on risk assets.
- Whether implied volatility mean-reverts after the flush. Deribit’s DVOL index moved from roughly 37 to above 44 during the selloff week. A DVOL level a bit above 44 maps to an approximate 30-day expected move near ±13% using a common rule of thumb (annualized volatility divided by the square root of 12).
That leaves room for an additional two-way price travel even if headlines cool. Two paths follow from the same set of gauges.
- If ETF totals remain net negative across multiple sessions and real yields stay near recent levels, Bitcoin can keep trading as levered risk beta into March. Rallies could be capped by redemption-led supply and lingering hedging demand in options.
- If ETF flows stabilize and macro stops tightening at the margin, the post-liquidation reset can reduce forced-selling risk. That would allow spot demand to set the tape again rather than cascades setting the pace.
The calendar provides a clean endpoint for the Groundhog Day metaphor. The next Federal Open Market Committee meeting is scheduled for March 17–18, 2026.
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