Peter Schiff thinks Bitcoin holders are in for a painful weekend. After BTC slipped below $80,000 on Saturday, the longtime critic said $75,000 could be next, with investors in U.S.-listed Bitcoin funds stuck waiting for stock exchanges to reopen Monday.
The price has since recovered some ground. Bitcoin traded at $80,698.38 on Coinbase at 01:38 UTC on October 25, roughly 2.01% above Saturday's $79,107 low on that exchange. Schiff's target would still require another 7.06% drop from that snapshot. It's his forecast, rather than a level Bitcoin has reached in this selloff.
What did Peter Schiff say?
In his October 24 post, Schiff wrote:
Bitcoin is finally breaking down. It's hard to believe it's held up this long. Now that it's below $80K, the next stop is likely $75K.
He followed that with a warning aimed partly at fund shareholders:
If that level fails to hold today, it's going to be a very long weekend for Bitcoiners, especially for ETF investors who can't sell until Monday.
That timing matters. Bitcoin changes hands around the clock, while the U.S. stock exchanges where those ETF shares trade close for the weekend. Shareholders therefore can't use a normal exchange session to respond to a Saturday or Sunday move. People holding Bitcoin directly can trade through the weekend, although execution prices and available liquidity vary by venue.
Saturday's daily candle also shows why the low alone doesn't tell the whole story. BTC opened at $81,079.63, fell under $80,000, and finished at $80,769.67 on Coinbase. That left it down 0.38% against Friday's close, after buyers recovered much of the intraday fall. The close and the low describe very different parts of the session.
The $80,000 recovery still has work to do
The bounce hasn't repaired the short-term trend. Calculations from completed Coinbase daily candles put the 50-day simple moving average at $81,797.58 and the 20-day average at $82,538.66. Saturday's close was below both.
Those are the first meaningful recovery tests. A move above $81,800 would recover the longer of those two averages. Holding above roughly $82,540 would also bring the price back above its recent 20-day average. A brief spike through either level would be less convincing than a daily close above it followed by buyers defending it.
The downside starts closer to home: $80,000, then Saturday's $79,107 low. A daily close below that low would strengthen the case for another leg down. Below it, $78,000 is a round-number checkpoint before Schiff's $75,000 target. These are conditional trading references; the chart doesn't give them guaranteed buying support.
Momentum and fund flows explain the caution
The 14-day Wilder relative strength index ended Saturday at 44.2. That's below the neutral midpoint of 50, but above the conventional oversold threshold of 30. In plain terms, momentum favors sellers without showing the extreme reading some traders look for before buying a rebound.
Coinbase traded about 3,705 BTC during Saturday's completed daily session, compared with 4,905 BTC Friday. Lower weekend volume deserves care when judging the rebound. Those numbers cover one exchange, so they don't establish whether trading across the entire market rose or fell.
Demand through Bitcoin funds weakened late in the week too. Farside's table records $635.6 million of net U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF outflows on October 22 and a preliminary $137.9 million on October 23, with one fund's Friday entry still unreported. But the running October 19-23 total remained positive at $301.2 million after stronger buying earlier in the week.
For a weekend trade, the choice is whether to buy the recovered $80,000 level or wait for evidence that buyers can regain the moving averages above it. A position built around that recovery needs room for the price to move, and a clear exit if Saturday's low breaks.