Why Is Bitcoin Stalling Below $70,000 While Gold Surges? Wintermute Points To A Structural Macro Break

Wintermute, the cryptocurrency market maker, published a market update Monday arguing that Bitcoin's (BTC) prolonged stall below $70,000 reflects a structural macro rotation away from software-leveraged growth assets - not a temporary correction.

The firm's OTC desk described the current environment as a "regime change" driven by two reinforcing structural forces: AI disruption reassessing software valuations, and deglobalization making supply chains and input costs permanently more fragmented.

Bitcoin has been confined to the $64,000-$67,000 range since a liquidation cascade two weeks ago.

The absence of a meaningful recovery bid, Wintermute notes, is more telling than the range itself.

The Two Macro Drivers

Wintermute identifies two simultaneous structural trades compressing growth-asset valuations.

The first is what it calls the "AI Rerate" - U.S. FY25 earnings combined with recent model releases have forced the market to reprice AI disruption risk sector by sector, compressing software growth multiples and calling into question the capex intensity of hardware plays.

The second is deglobalization: Trump's pivot from IEEPA to Section 122 tariff authority after the Supreme Court ruling, Wintermute argues, was the clearest confirmation that tariffs are structural, not transitory.