Bitcoin is currently at the price level it has always defended, and the current $67,000 BTC mining cost is significant

Trader Plan C recently published a chart showing a production cost model that puts Bitcoin’s marginal mining cost at around $67,000, and shows that historical price trends have repeatedly bounced back from that red line.

He added that “commodities rarely trade for less than their cost of production.” While the hook is clean and the logic is intuitive, the reality underlying Bitcoin’s recent volatility is more complex and informative than a single line can capture.

After hitting an intraday low near $60,000 on February 6, Bitcoin has rebounded to around $70,000 at the time of writing, breaking through the widely watched $63,000 threshold that was the basis for recent bottom predictions.

However, questions remained about whether the market was moving from forced deleveraging to true spot-driven price discovery and what signals would converge to support that transition.

Four important zones

Rather than looking for a single magic number, analysts combine several frameworks to create demand ladders. Each tier represents a different valuation anchor, which together map out where buying pressure may actually occur.

Zone A ranges from $70,600 to $66,900. Glassnode uses the UTXO realized price distribution model to identify this as a dense cost-based cluster, indicating a high concentration of coins that were last moved in this price range.

This cluster became the closest on-chain absorption zone after Bitcoin lost its true market average of around $80,200.

Glassnode warns that any bailout rally risks becoming correction noise unless real spot demand returns, as spot trading volumes remain structurally weak.

This means that if it bounces off this zone, it will be driven purely by leverage flash and will not settle.

Zone B is centered around $63,000 and is important from a behavioral rather than an on-chain perspective.

Galaxy Digital’s research arm points out that Bitcoin’s 50% drawdown from its October 2025 high of around $126,296 reaches almost exactly $63,000, forming a clean round-trip threshold that mirrors the capitulation point of the previous bear market.

The situation below $63,000 can be read in two ways: either support has broken or the market has performed a classic capitulation search before finding true demand.

Which interpretation is correct depends on what happens next with flows and derivatives.

Zone C ranges from $58,000 to $56,000 and is home to the two major cycle bottom anchors.

Galaxy has articulated a 200-week moving average of around $58,000 and a realized price around $56,000, levels that have historically marked the lower end of the endurance cycle.

Glassnode has independently set the realized price at approximately $55,800. Both frameworks are consistent. If the current rebound fails and BTC falls, this traditionally becomes a magnet zone where long-term capital gets involved again.

Zone D introduces a production cost model, and this is where the Plan C graph resides, but only as one of several estimates.

Other models put the average cost of production at around $87,000, suggesting that spot trading is well below that estimate, stressing miners.

Meanwhile, Plan C, a per-issue difficulty model, locks in agency costs in the low $60,000s. Nuance is important. “Goods cannot be traded below cost” is a useful direction, but it is not an absolute floor for Bitcoin.

Miners may operate at a loss in the short term by selling government bonds, introducing hedges, and riding out the pain until the difficulty is adjusted downward and the marginal cost falls.

Production costs act not as guaranteed support, but as a stress gauge that drives supply reactions such as miner capitulation and treasury liquidation before the equilibrium is reset.

What does rebound confirmation actually look like?

Declaring a regional floor requires more than just holding levels. The best signals span derivatives, on-chain stress, institutional flows, and mining dynamics.

There are voices of fear in the derivatives market. Deribit data shows a 25-delta risk reversal skew of approximately -13%, an inverted implied volatility term structure, and negative funding rates. These are classic protection bid conditions.

A rebound becomes more reliable as skew recedes from extreme negative, IV normalizes, and funding becomes persistently positive.

On-chain realized losses are still increasing. Glassnode reported a seven-day moving average of more than $1.26 billion per day, which is consistent with a forced deleveraging.

A bullish shift would see realized losses peak and begin to decline while the price stabilizes within the $66,900 to $70,600 range, indicating seller exhaustion rather than a temporary pause.

Institutional trends are against us. There were nearly $690 million in monthly net outflows as of February 5, adding to the $1.6 billion in net outflows recorded in January, according to data from Pharside Investors.

In the illiquid environment where allocators drove much of the previous rally, even a slowdown to flatness is important, so the flow reversal doesn’t need to be dramatically positive.

Mining stress is reaching a turning point. TheMinerMag noted that the hash price is expected to fall below $32 per petahash/second and drop by about 13.37% in the next correction.

This easing could stabilize hashrate and ease selling pressure on miners, but only if prices hold long enough for the correction to take effect.

Three future scenarios

The first potential scenario is the formation of a local bottom. Support ranges from $66,900 to $70,600 as on-chain clusters absorb supply. Derivatives normalize, flows stop bleeding and realized losses subside.

The upside will initially target a return to the true market average of around $80,200 before facing overhead supply from underwater holders.

The second scenario consists of an unstable downward drift. Galaxy sees a fair chance that BTC could end up in a range near $70,000 before BTC tests the $56,000 to $58,000 zone in the coming weeks or months.

This fits a market where leverage is flush but spot demand is non-existent, which is Glassnode’s central caveat. The situation remains unstable and relief efforts are not sustainable.

The final scenario is a deeper surrender. Another forced selloff, likely caused by continued ETF outflows or macro risk repricing, will send BTC through the current zone.

Here, $56,000 to $58,000 is less of a target and more of a level that long-term capital has historically entered with confidence.

real transition

The central story is whether Bitcoin is moving back from leverage-driven pricing to spot-driven price discovery.

Glassnode believes that the market will remain vulnerable until spot participation returns, and that normalization of derivatives alone will not bring about participation. Production cost models provide a useful lens into miner economics, but they account for supply response mechanisms rather than price floors.

Comparing products will not work if difficulty is adjustable and miners can finance their operations through drawdowns.

ETF trends currently have macro weight. Flows are large enough that capitulation becomes increasingly apparent as a regime shift in allocator psychology, rather than simply reversing funding rates on offshore exchanges.

January’s outflows were not a retail panic, but institutional risk aversion, and reversing them will require a catalyst beyond a technical rally.

Bitcoin has regained much of the ground lost in the washout, but converting that level into sustained demand is a different process.

This data provides a ladder of zones where demand may emerge, a checklist of confirmatory signals, and a reminder that production costs, not floors, are the primary stress indicator.

Whether $60,297 marks a capitulation low or is just another step in yet another correction will depend on flows, what happens next with derivatives, and the willingness of spot buyers to intervene amid persistent fears.