The post Bitcoin bounces, but $72,000 remains key price level to breaking downtrend: Crypto Markets Today appeared on BitcoinEthereumNews.com.

The crypto market pulled back from potential peril on Thursday, with bitcoin BTC$67,407.51 rising 3.9% from a local low of $65,600. Prices advanced overnight, with bitcoin adding 2% since midnight UTC, solana (SOL) gaining 2.7% and ether (ETH) rising 1.2%. The broader downtrend, however, remains intact with bitcoin printing a series of lower lows and lower highs to give back all of the gains it made in the 12 months ended October 2025. In the short term, bitcoin needs to break above $72,000 to confirm a bullish shift from the range-bound price action that has seen it float between support and resistance. Spot bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. have posted their largest drawdown of this cycle, with 100,300 BTC in withdrawals since October. That equates to around $6.8 billion of extra selling pressure on an already fragile market. Derivatives positioning: Market dynamics are stabilizing. Open interest rose to $15.8 billion, signaling a shift from leverage cleanup toward a firmer floor, and retail sentiment is rebounding, with funding rates flipping flat to positive across all venues and hitting 10% on Bybit and Hyperliquid. Institutional conviction remains anchored, with the three-month annualized basis persisting at 3%. The BTC options market shows a slight shift in sentiment, with 24-hour volume reaching a 51/49 split in favor of calls. While the one-week 25-delta skew has jumped to 17%, the implied volatility (IV) term structure remains in short-term backwardation. This persistent front-end spike confirms that traders are still paying a “panic premium” for immediate protection, even as longer-dated tenors stabilize near 49%. Coinglass data shows $179 million in 24-hour liquidations, with a 56-44 split between longs and shorts. BTC ($59 million), ETH ($46 million) and others ($16 million) were the leaders in terms of notional liquidations. The Binance liquidation heatmap indicates $68,400 as a core…

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Filed under: News - @ February 20, 2026 12:21 pm