This week, Bitcoin's price has dramatically fallen below the $92,000 mark, triggering a chain reaction in the market. Accompanying the price correction, approximately $865 million in liquidations occurred across the network within 24 hours. As leveraged positions were cleared, Bitcoin's overall network hash rate also significantly declined from its peak, with the 7-day average dropping below 1,000 EH/s, indicating increasing pressure on miners. In the context of further compressed profit margins post-halving, some large miners are accelerating the shift of their hash power and capital towards AI and high-performance computing (HPC) businesses to hedge against the profitability risks of a single Bitcoin mining model. Meanwhile, the Gamma risk exposure in the options market has concentrated around $92,000, reaching approximately $1.4 billion, with the key price structure "flipping" from bullish Gamma to bearish Gamma around $88,000, sharply raising market concerns about a new round of declines.

Price and Leverage Liquidation Impact After Losing $92,000

● Price Level Breached: After Bitcoin's price fell below the critical short-term level of $92,000, concentrated selling pressure emerged, leading to a synchronized sell-off in both the spot and futures markets, breaking the previous optimistic sentiment of "continuing the bull market and quickly reaching $100,000."

● High Leverage Vulnerability Exposed: According to statistics, during the price correction phase, the total liquidation across the network was approximately $865 million, primarily from long positions. High-leverage funds faced forced liquidations in a short time, indicating that previous market bets on the upward trajectory had become overly concentrated.

● Expectation Trading Cools: On the expectation front, the probability of the event contract on Polymarket predicting "Bitcoin reaching $100,000 in January" has dropped to about 25%, significantly cooling compared to earlier high levels, reflecting a rapid correction in confidence regarding the short-term path to "breaking $100,000."

● Dual Reversal of Sentiment and Price: The breach of the price level combined with liquidation amplified intra-day volatility, causing cracks in the previously optimistic narrative of "bull market continuation," leading to a concentrated squeeze on optimistic expectations and a re-evaluation of the potential for deeper adjustments.

15% Decline in Hash Rate and the Pressure Chain on Miners

The changes in Bitcoin network hash rate are clearly reflecting the profitability pressure on miners in on-chain data. Since reaching a phase high on October 19, the total network hash rate has declined by about 15%, with the 7-day average dropping below the 1,000 EH/s mark, indicating that some hash power is gradually exiting Bitcoin main chain mining. This trend aligns with previous warnings from research institution TheMinerMag, which indicated that 2025 could become one of the most challenging profit environments for miners, as rising electricity, equipment, and financing costs combined with price volatility put pressure on traditional mining business models. To improve capital efficiency and asset returns, miners are increasingly shifting their facilities, electricity, and hash rate infrastructure towards AI inference and training, as well as broader HPC services. Management from institutions like StandardHash has pointed out that miners are pursuing profit margins far exceeding those of simple Bitcoin mining by migrating to AI computing services. During a price downturn, the continuous outflow of hash rate not only indicates a potential change in the path of miner selling pressure but also marginally weakens the network's security redundancy and raises the cost of attacks, making the negative cycle of "price decline—increased miner pressure—hash rate loss" more uncertain.

Options Chain Risks Under Gamma Structure Reversal

● Key Gamma Concentration Zone: Around $92,000, the Gamma risk exposure in the Bitcoin options market is approximately $1.4 billion, becoming a focal point for current derivatives traders and market makers. When the underlying price is in this range, small fluctuations can trigger large-scale hedging adjustments.

● 88,000 Dollar Position "Flips": Notably, the Gamma structure around $88,000 has shifted from bullish Gamma to bearish Gamma. This means that as the price approaches or falls below this level, market makers' dynamic hedging direction will switch from "buying on dips, buffering volatility" to "selling on dips, amplifying volatility."

● Passive Selling Risk After Support Weakens: As support within the $88,000-$90,000 range gradually weakens, if spot and perpetual prices fall below this level, market makers will be forced to increase short hedging positions, amplifying passive selling pressure and pushing prices further down.

● Acceleration Zone Below $87,000: Some institutional analyses suggest that if the price effectively falls below $87,000, the structure of derivative positions may trigger a chain reaction of "accelerated downward" movement, with potential targets pointing towards the $72,000-$74,000 range. This range is not a definitive target price but rather a high-risk evolutionary path calculated based on current Gamma and open contract distribution, warranting continuous monitoring.

Co-Resonance of Whale Losses and Retail Liquidations

In this rapid correction, leveraged retail investors and whales with high positions are simultaneously under pressure, albeit with different paths and rhythms. For many retail investors who chased the price using perpetual contracts and high leverage, the price's rapid drop below $92,000 and continued downward testing, combined with insufficient capital management and the amplifying effects of high leverage, led to a concentrated breach of liquidation lines in a very short time, with the $865 million liquidation figure vividly illustrating this vulnerability. Meanwhile, some whales and institutional funds that chose to build positions at high levels during the previous price uptrend are facing varying degrees of unrealized loss pressure in the current price range. To control net exposure, these large funds may choose to reduce Bitcoin spot positions, hedge long contracts, or increase put protection, actions that inherently weaken the effective buying depth in the order book. When retail investors are passively liquidated, and whales and institutions actively reduce positions or passively hedge, market liquidity exhibits characteristics of "passive contraction": selling pressure surges, buying pressure retreats, slippage increases, and each price dip becomes more likely to trigger larger fluctuations, thereby amplifying the entire system's negative feedback loop.

The Dual-Edged Impact of Miners Transitioning to AI and HPC on Bitcoin

Miners are accelerating the migration of some hash power and infrastructure to the AI and HPC computing market. On a micro level, this is a practical choice to alleviate cash flow pressure. For the same scale of electricity and facility resources, if shifted to AI inference, model training, or high-performance enterprise computing services, the return on unit hash rate is considered significantly higher in many cases than simple Bitcoin mining, helping miners stabilize cash flow and reduce the pressure of forced BTC sales to cover electricity, operational, and depreciation costs. If this transition achieves some success in the coming months, the systemic selling pressure from miners may temporarily ease, providing some space for price stabilization. However, from a resource allocation perspective, as more capital expenditures and hardware investments flow into the AI sector, Bitcoin's priority in mining machine procurement, electricity contracts, and data center expansions may be passively reduced, leading to a slowdown in the long-term growth path of network hash rate. The diversification of miners' operations will also prompt the market to reassess the valuation relationship and resource redistribution pattern between Bitcoin and AI computing: on one hand, the Bitcoin narrative extends from a "single mining cash flow asset" to one of "an asset portfolio bundled with AI computing," while on the other hand, if AI business returns far exceed on-chain mining, the probability of miners choosing to "preserve AI and abandon mining" during price fluctuations is also increasing, adding more uncertainty to future network security redundancy and supply elasticity.

Next Steps Amidst Interwoven Price, Hash Rate, and Options Structure

Currently, Bitcoin is simultaneously facing the triple pressure of price breakdown, hash rate decline, and deteriorating Gamma structure: the former breaches a critical short-term level triggering a wave of liquidations, the latter reflects miners' profitability dilemmas and hash rate outflows, and the latter amplifies the magnitude of each price fluctuation at the derivatives level. The migration of miners to AI and HPC businesses, while alleviating their survival crisis and selling pressure, also introduces new variables for the long-term hash rate trend, security redundancy, and selling pressure paths of the Bitcoin network, challenging the traditional positive cycle assumption of "high price—high hash rate—high security." In the derivatives market, the approximately $1.4 billion Gamma exposure concentrated around $92,000, along with the structural flip from bullish Gamma to bearish Gamma near $88,000, makes the risk scenario of "if it falls below $87,000 or further dips to the $72,000-$74,000 range" no longer just a tail assumption, but one of the paths that need to be closely monitored. In the short term, as the aftermath of liquidations and hedging positions have not yet fully cleared, price volatility may continue to remain high; in the medium to long term, Bitcoin's performance will rely more on whether hash rate can flow back, how miners and institutional funds reallocate capital between Bitcoin and AI computing, and whether macro liquidity and risk appetite cycles can provide new incremental support.

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