Bitcoin has until the end of the year to recover, or the Power Law will be invalidated.
The Power Law model isn’t a prophecy. It’s a time-based regression that treats Bitcoin’s long-run price path as a power curve, and the “deadline” talk centers on a rising floor. Better yet, a lower band that rises every day, regardless of the price.
If Bitcoin chops sideways or sells off through the fall, that floor eventually catches up to price, creating the first headline break of a model that’s held for the asset’s entire history.
As of mid-February 2026, Newhedge’s live Power Law tracker shows the central trendline near $121,733 and the floor near $51,128.
Bitcoin trades around $67,000 as of press time, well above the floor, but far below the trend.
The floor isn’t static. Because the model is anchored to time since Bitcoin’s genesis block on Jan. 3, 2009, and grows roughly to the power of 5.8, the floor drifts upward by about 0.093% per day, or roughly $47 per day at current levels.
By Oct. 1, the floor is projected to be around $62,700. By Oct. 31, it hits approximately $64,400. By year-end, it reaches $68,000.
That means if Bitcoin stays flat near $67,000 through the fall, the floor catches it by mid-December. Any serious dip below the mid-$60,000s in the fourth quarter turns into a “first break” narrative.
The model in plain English
The Bitcoin Power Law family of charts fits the asset’s long-run price trajectory to a power curve in time, often visualized as a straight line on a log-log plot.
Newhedge frames it as a long-term log-log power-law model and attributes it to astrophysicist Giovanni Santostasi, with prices growing roughly to the power of 5.8 over time.
Most versions aren’t single lines, but corridors. A central regression represents “trend” or “fair value,” and parallel upper and lower rails act as “resistance” and “support.”
Santostasi frames his Power Law Theory as an attempt to describe Bitcoin as a scale-invariant growth system and argues that it is scientific and falsifiable.
That framing matters. If the model is falsifiable, it needs a pre-committed rule, such as a weekly close below the floor for a specified number of weeks. Without that rule, any break can be dismissed as noise.
Why October matters
The October deadline is shorthand for time tightening.
Because the model is time-based, the floor rises every day even if Bitcoin does nothing. That turns sideways markets into a countdown narrative. By late October, the floor enters the mid-$60,000s.
Any sustained price action below that level creates a clean headline: “Bitcoin breaks Power Law floor for the first time.”
But a floor break wouldn’t “invalidate Bitcoin.” It would invalidate a specific parameterization, such as the site, bands, and data source.
It would signal a regime change relative to the historical fit, suggesting slower growth than the long-run curve implies. And it would hand critics a clean narrative. Log-log regressions can look stable in-sample but be statistically fragile.
Amdax’s Tim Stolte has been a widely circulated critic on precisely these grounds, arguing that power-law fits to Bitcoin are spurious correlations driven by sample window sensitivity.
A 4-to-6% drawdown from current levels, enough to tag or break a mid-$60,000 floor, isn’t exotic. It’s routine volatility. One-month at-the-money implied volatility on Bitcoin recently sat around 51.77% on Feb. 10.
Deribit’s DVOL explainer provides a rule of thumb for converting annualized volatility to the expected daily move: divide by the square root of 365, roughly 19. That translates to expected single-day swings in the mid-single-digit percentage range.
A sharp risk-off episode could easily push Bitcoin into the low $60,000s or below.
Fidelity’s Jurrien Timmer has publicly framed roughly $65,000 as a “line in the sand” level, referencing power-law-style trend framing. That helps the story feel less like crypto numerology and more like a widely watched psychological level that happens to rhyme with the model’s rising floor.
When institutional voices cite the same zone, the model’s band becomes a self-fulfilling coordination point.
Three scenarios for the fourth quarter
There are three potential scenarios for the fourth quarter.
The first is the “chop is dangerous” frame. Even if Bitcoin is flat, the floor rises toward it. Every week of consolidation shrinks the cushion. By late October, the buffer disappears entirely if the price stays near current levels.
Second, the “volatility makes breaks plausible” frame. Mid-teens monthly move magnitudes are normal given the current implied volatility. A 4-to-6% drawdown is not an outlier event.
If Bitcoin gaps down on a macro surprise or on accelerated ETF outflows, the floor gets tested immediately.
Third, the “mainstream anchor” frame. The mid-$60,000s keep showing up not just in power-law charts but in institutional commentary. That makes the zone a coordination point.
When enough participants treat a level as significant, it becomes significant through reflexivity.
The model ignores drivers, yet drivers determine where Bitcoin trades within the channel. Two variables matter most: ETF flow regime and risk-off volatility bursts.
Bitcoin has recently been trading in an environment where ETF demand is discussed as cooling or turning. US spot Bitcoin ETFs drove the rally from late 2023 through early 2024, but flows have moderated.
If outflows accelerate or inflows stall, the marginal bid weakens.
Additionally, recent sharp downside moves have been tied to broader risk sentiment, such as equity market stress, inflation surprises, and geopolitical shocks.
Those are exactly the regimes that create “gap risk” relative to a smooth trendline. The power-law model assumes continuous compounding. Real markets have discontinuities.
What a break would mean
A floor break would not “invalidate Bitcoin.” It would invalidate a specific parameterization, signal a regime change versus the historical fit, or hand critics a clean narrative.
Log-log regressions can look stable in-sample but be statistically fragile. They’re vulnerable to spurious correlation risk, sensitivity to sample window, and overfitting.
However, the debate is becoming scientific again.
A recent academic preprint from February 2026 agrees that the Bitcoin price is approximately power-law-in-time but finds a different slope, roughly 4.2, on 2011-to-February-2026 data.
The paper argues that “activity-warped time,” which adjusts the time axis for volatility and transaction volume, improves fit and out-of-sample performance. Even sympathetic research sees parameter instability.
The power-law model isn’t wrong. It’s a first-order approximation that evolves as the system matures.
| Date | Power Law Floor (proj.) | BTC level that would avoid a floor break (≈ floor) | Cushion if BTC = $67,000 (USD / %) | Headline risk tag |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Now (mid-Feb 2026) | $51,128 | $51,128 | +$15,872 / +31.1% | Low |
| Oct 1, 2026 | $62,700 | $62,700 | +$4,300 / +6.9% | Medium |
| Oct 31, 2026 | $64,400 | $64,400 | +$2,600 / +4.0% | High |
| Mid-Dec 2026 (catch-up under flat BTC) | ~$67,000 | ~$67,000 | $0 / 0.0% | High |
| Dec 31, 2026 | $68,000 | $68,000 | –$1,000 / –1.5% | High |
What to watch
Distance-to-floor, updated weekly, is the cleanest tracker. Whether “break” means a wick, a daily close, or a weekly close should be defined upfront.
Volatility regime matters: if implied vol pops, the probability of a floor tag rises mechanically. ETF flow headlines and macro risk-off episodes are the “why now” drivers that would push prices into the testing range.
Model disagreement itself is worth tracking. Different parameterizations produce different floors.
Some use the genesis block as the starting point. Others anchor to the first exchange price. Some refit annually. Others hold parameters fixed.
Those choices create meaningful divergence. A break on one chart might not show up on another.
The October deadline isn’t a prophecy. It’s a mechanical consequence of a time-based regression. The floor rises every day.
If Bitcoin chops sideways or sells off, the floor catches up. By late October, the cushion disappears.
Whether that matters depends on whether you believe the model has predictive power or is just a curve-fitted historical artifact. Either way, the next eight months will provide a clean test.
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