Bitcoin's Dropping Bear Scenario: Options Markets Warn of $80K Plunge by June

As Bitcoin entered 2026 on a high note, briefly scaling $95,000 at the start of the year, traders navigating the crypto markets are now bracing for a potentially significant retreat. Options data from decentralized and centralized trading venues paints a cautionary picture: there’s roughly a 30% probability that Bitcoin could plunge below $80,000 by the end of June. This dropping bear risk scenario reflects mounting concerns about both technical price pressure and geopolitical headwinds that could reshape market sentiment in the coming months.

The current price action has already validated some of these bearish concerns. Bitcoin has retreated to around $88,000 as of late January 2026, shedding nearly 2.45% over the past 24 hours and bringing it 7,000 from its early-year peak. What’s particularly revealing is not just the current pullback, but what options traders are positioning for across major trading platforms.

Options Data Reveals 30% Probability of Deeper Declines

On-chain options platforms like Derive.xyz and Deribit—the industry’s largest centralized options exchange—show pronounced positioning toward downside outcomes. According to Sean Dawson, head of research at Derive.xyz, the data tells a compelling story: “Options markets show a clear downside skew, with a 30% chance BTC falls below $80K by June 26, compared to a 19% chance it rallies above $120K over the same period.”

This probability mismatch is the real signal. While traders assign only a one-in-five probability to Bitcoin reaching $120,000 territory, the three-in-ten probability of falling below $80,000 highlights asymmetric risk perception. There’s heavy open interest concentration in put options—contracts that profit when prices decline—specifically at strike prices between $75,000 and $80,000, suggesting traders are hedging against or betting on a pullback toward the mid-$70,000s.

If realized, such a move would represent Bitcoin’s lowest level since April 2025, when the largest cryptocurrency crashed to $75,000 amid Trump’s sweeping tariff policies that roiled global financial markets.

Trump’s Tariff Threats Reignite Market Volatility Fears

The principal catalyst behind this dropping bear sentiment is geopolitical friction, specifically renewed tensions between the United States and Europe. President Trump’s latest threat to impose a 10% tariff on imports from ten European nations—ostensibly to penalize their opposition to his Greenland acquisition plan—has resurfaced memories of the April 2025 tariff shock.

Back then, comprehensive tariff announcements sent Bitcoin cascading through support levels, demonstrating that trade policy uncertainty translates directly to crypto market turbulence. Rising international discord, particularly around the Greenland controversy, raises the specter of a regime shift toward higher volatility, according to Dawson: “Rising geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Europe—particularly around Greenland—raise the risk of a regime shift back into a higher-volatility environment, a dynamic not currently reflected in spot prices.”

The implication is stark: current Bitcoin pricing at $88,000 may not fully discount the downside risk if tariff escalation accelerates or geopolitical tensions intensify further.

Understanding the Options Mechanics Behind Price Predictions

For those unfamiliar with how options markets work, it’s useful to understand the mechanism behind these probability predictions. Options are derivative contracts that function like side bets on Bitcoin’s future price direction. A trader pays a small entry fee and a premium to lock in a “what if” scenario.

A call option profits if Bitcoin rises above a predetermined price level—think of it as betting the price will jump, allowing you to buy cheap now and sell high later. Conversely, a put option generates returns if Bitcoin falls below a preset level, letting you lock in sell prices before prices potentially decline. In both cases, traders risk losing their initial fee and premium if the market doesn’t move as anticipated. It’s this crowdsourced price-guessing mechanism that’s revealing the 30% probability of BTC falling below $80,000—a reflection of thousands of traders’ collective judgment about price direction.

Historical Parallel: Why April 2025’s $75K Crash Still Matters

The April 2025 precedent looms large in current risk assessment. Back then, when Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on multiple nations, Bitcoin tanked from higher levels to $75,000. That episode demonstrated crypto’s sensitivity to macro policy shocks and investor risk-off sentiment. The fact that options markets are now concentrating open interest around the $75,000-$80,000 zone isn’t random—it reflects traders explicitly modeling the scenario where history repeats.

What’s changed since April 2025 is the starting point and the time horizon. Bitcoin is entering this potential correction scenario from an already elevated year-to-date base, and traders are forecasting a potential six-month window for this downside to materialize. The pattern recognition—tariff threat → market correction—is clearly baked into derivatives positioning.

Market Positioning Signals Extended Downside Risk

The options skew—a technical measure comparing the price differential between call and put options—remains decidedly negative. This negative skew is the smoking gun for near-term downside fears. Sizeable concentrations of put option open interest at $75,000 and $80,000 strike prices imply not just one-off hedging but structured expectations for a drawdown into the mid-$70,000s.

This positioning is mirrored across both Derive.xyz and Deribit, suggesting broad consensus rather than isolated trader conviction. When options markets achieve this degree of agreement on downside risk, it’s typically because fundamental uncertainties—in this case, geopolitical—are actively shaping trader expectations about volatility and potential price dislocations.

Beyond Bitcoin: Market Signals From Other Assets

Interestingly, divergent signals are emerging from adjacent markets. In the NFT space, Pudgy Penguins is establishing itself as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, transitioning from speculative digital luxury goods into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its ecosystem now spans phygital products (exceeding $13 million in retail sales with over 1 million units sold), gaming experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500,000 downloads in just two weeks), and a widely distributed token airdropped to 6+ million wallets. This resilience in consumer-facing crypto products suggests selective strength even amid broader market concerns.

Meanwhile, large tech companies continue signaling bullish long-term AI spending. Fourth-quarter earnings from Microsoft and Meta showed no deceleration in AI-related capital allocation. Microsoft highlighted AI as now one of its largest businesses with long-term growth trajectory, while Meta projected sharply elevated capital spending throughout 2026 to fund its Super Intelligence Labs initiative. This institutional commitment to digital infrastructure could provide support for risk assets during volatility, even if near-term corrections materialize.

The convergence of dropping bear scenarios in Bitcoin options markets, resurgent geopolitical risks, and the nuanced strength in consumer and enterprise crypto applications suggests 2026 will remain a tale of two speeds: near-term tactical downside risks offset by longer-term structural tailwinds for digital assets in AI and consumer ecosystems.