Crypto expert: Bitcoin's rise not driven by news but by structure

Michaël van de Poppe recently spoke with analyst Henrik Zeberg about what actually caused the Bitcoin rise. Instead of the usual explanation, that certain news events pushed the price up, Zeberg exposed how the crypto market misinterprets news.

In brief:

• News events are wrongly credited for price movements that were already underway
• Bitcoin rises as a result of structural factors, not of short-lived news events
• Zeberg warns that the current rally is structurally similar to late 2021, which could be a sign of a peak

The avalanche theory of market movements

Zeberg used a striking metaphor to explain the phenomenon. He compared a strong market movement to an avalanche on a mountain slope. The structure was already unstable, the mountain was already full of snow and threatening to collapse. When the avalanche finally breaks loose, we can later point to various triggers: a snowfall, a skier, or other superficial causes. But those triggers are not the real reason for the avalanche.

In the same way, capital sat in stocks with gains of 2 to 4 times in household portfolios. The dollar weakened. Risk appetite had built up. The rotation from stocks to crypto always follows the same pattern. Zeberg argued that this pattern is consistent. Normally it takes 10 to 20 weeks after a strong NASDAQ run before capital flows back into Bitcoin.

News receives undeserved credit

Many traders and investors make the same mistake: they associate price movements with the news events that take place on the same day. That Bessent doubled the purchases of Treasury bonds and that the White House organised an openly bullish crypto summit: these facts happened at the moment Bitcoin made its breakout. But that does not mean they caused that breakout.

Zeberg said of this: “It could have been any random event that made the avalanche slide. We only see what happened on that one day, and then say: oh, that is because of that.” This leads to a common problem: traders follow news links instead of fundamental market structure.

A warning for the current rally

Despite his analysis of structural factors, Zeberg warned that the same avalanche logic can also work the other way. The current rally, in his estimation, has the same characteristics as the boom in late 2021: steep, convincing and possibly not the start of a multi-year bull market, but rather a final push to the peak.

At the time of this analysis, Bitcoin was trading around $75.720, with a loss of 0.8% in 24 hours. For traders who understand how market structure works, this distinction is crucial to their strategy.