If you have been watching your crypto portfolio lately, it has not been pretty. Bitcoin dropped back below $70,000, and the internet is doing what it always does: half the people screaming "it's over," the other half yelling "buy the dip."

But before you do anything, let's break down what is happening, why it matters, and what it means for people paying attention to crypto on this side of the world.

So What Actually Happened?

In early February 2026, Bitcoin fell 7.2% in a single day, landing around $70,894. Now that sounds bad, and here is the context.

Bitcoin was at an all-time high of $126,080 just in October 2025. So right now, we are sitting about 43% below that peak and that is a massive drop, but it is not some random collapse. It is more like a correction after a massive run-up.

The sell-off didn't happen because of anything specific to crypto either. Global markets were in what traders call a "risk-off" mood which means people were pulling money out of anything that felt risky or speculative.

Stocks, gold, silver — everything felt the brunt of it. When traditional investments panics, even crypto will feel it.

The Institutional Problem Nobody Was Talking About

For the past couple of years, the big story in crypto was institutional adoption which simply means companies like BlackRock and Fidelity started buying Bitcoin through ETFs (exchange-traded funds). That brought in about $62 billion in new money. Huge, right?

But there is a problem. A lot of that money was not there because those institutions believed in Bitcoin. They were running something called a basis trade.

Basically, they would buy Bitcoin through ETFs and simultaneously bet against Bitcoin futures, pocketing the gap in price. At its peak, this was making them around 17% returns annually with almost no risk. Actual free money.

By early 2026, that same trick was only returning less than 5%. So they packed up and left.

CoinShares estimates that hedge fund exposure dropped by one-third in just a few months. Billions in demand just quietly disappeared with no announcement or drama.

A lot of the "institutional confidence" in Bitcoin was actually just a clever trade. Once the trade stopped working, the money walked.

What the Sentiment Numbers Are Saying

The Crypto Fear & Greed Index which measures how confident or scared the market is on a scale of 0 to 100 hit as low as 9 out of 100. That is basically the market on its knees. For context, anything below 25 is considered "extreme fear."

The average person holding a Bitcoin ETF was 24% in danger at the worst point of this dip. And yet, most of them did not sell.

That actually matters and it tells you that even though people are scared, they haven't completely lost faith.

One more thing worth knowing is that there is a metric called the Coinbase premium that compares Bitcoin's price on Coinbase (where big US institutions trade) versus Binance (where most regular people trade globally).

At the worst point of this dip, Bitcoin was $167.8 cheaper on Coinbase than on Binance. This technically means American institutions were selling, while everyone else was trying to buy. That is not a healthy sign in the short term.

Should You Be Worried or Excited?

Nobody knows for certain. Prediction platform Polymarket gave a 69% chance of Bitcoin falling below $70,000 in February, but also put 54% odds on it recovering above $100,000 before the end of 2026. That is just how volatile this market is.

Long-term, serious analysts are still bullish. Standard Chartered and Bernstein are both targeting $150,000 by year-end.

And even with this dip, Bitcoin is still up over 400% since 2022, way ahead of gold over the same period.

On the cautious side, if Bitcoin keeps falling, the next major support level is around $58,000 and that is the 200-week moving average, a line that has historically acted as a floor. Worth watching.

What This Means If You're Watching From Here

If you are following the updates from your African city, Bitcoin's price is now heavily driven by Wall Street's mood and institutional positioning, not just by how much the technology is being adopted or used day to day.

When hedge funds exit a trade, the price drops, regardless of what is happening with adoption in Lagos, Nairobi, or Accra.

That doesn't mean crypto is not relevant. It means you need to understand why prices are moving, not just that they are.

The fundamentals like limited supply, growing global adoption, hedge against weak currencies have not changed. What changed is the short-term behaviour of people who were never really "in" for the right reasons.

Stay informed. Don't make panic decisions. The people who come out ahead in crypto are never the ones reacting to headlines, they are the ones who understood the market before the headlines were written.