Bitcoin is in a bear market. This information is not contradictory.
According to Jim Ferraioli, Director of Digital Currencies Research and Strategy at Charles Schwab, they argued Wednesday on Bloomberg is accurate and stable: this transaction has a measured value, and the floor is not built from theories or charts, but from the physics of energy consumption.
These numbers give a snapshot of what is going on. Bitcoin it went up at $ 126,000 in the fall before the fall of almost $ 60,000 in February – with 50% criticism that, despite the brutality of recent buyers, falls far from the 75% – including the implosions that meant before Bitcoin markets bear.
Ferraioli’s main analysis focuses on one question: how much does it cost to produce Bitcoin? The answer is to create a natural gravitational force that has been going around a number of times.
For the most efficient miners – those working on the next level of ASIC hardware with access to very cheap power – the cost of producing one Bitcoin is around $60,000, Ferraioli said.
That number is not random. It represents a total operating cost of about $0.07 per kilowatt hour with the highest quality semiconductor equipment available.
Inefficient miners – those with older ASIC hardware, higher electricity costs, and lower margins – carry production costs of around $95,000 per BTC, according to Glassnode data cited in May 2026 by Schwab. research report. This difference between $60,000 and $95,000 defines the maximum valuation of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin power down: Because $60,000 can write down
Ferraioli argues that in deep bear markets, the price of the best mining has been acting as a floor. February’s low near $60,000 is closely related to that level, as well as BTC’s 200-week moving average.
Forced BTC sales are not random. It affects the population. Investors who run forced investments are the ones who acquired Bitcoin in the last 18 months – the buyers who increased the stock from $80,000 to $126,000 and saw the profits come out completely.
Schwab tracks two levels of value metrics to calculate this pressure: the average cost of buying a US spot ETF and owning an ETP, which is close to $83,000, is the cost of trading – excluding the money paid to miners – which is close to $78,000.
Both of these numbers are above current rates, putting many recent entrants in unmet loss positions and adding $83,000 as a ceiling for overhead instead of a subsidy.
Glassnode is on-chain data confirms this. Bitcoin’s recent test stalled the ETF’s price around $83,000, with total losses rising to $1.35 billion for the day and long-term owners pulling out of top positions. Hedge funds represent about 30% of ETP ownership but are active in the market, trading rather than directly – meaning they don’t invest naturally when prices fall.
This is where Ferraioli’s analysis becomes compelling. Every major publicly traded Bitcoin miner has announced a pivot to high-performance computing (HPC) for AI inference workloads. The economics on their face seem to be in favor of abandoning mining: estimates bring more money per megawatt hour than Bitcoin mining in the most important windows.
But the need for AI knowledge is not the same as 24 hours. Models run faster during business hours and are idle overnight and on weekends.
This creates a fixed advantage that doesn’t remove BTC mining – it puts it on top of it. Schwab’s analysis shows Bitcoin as a good way to get a strong investment in the off-peak period, which is covered during the most important period.
Data centers that use this hybrid model enable 24-hour usage instead of going dark when the need for information is lost. For miners, this means stable income, reduced BTC sales forced to pay operating costs, and lower risk during bear markets.
Bitcoin is backed by energy
The major thesis is one of Energy Economics. Bitcoin they have no valuethere is no free money, and no CEO gives advice. Its value, in Ferraioli’s design, comes from the energy cost required to produce it – a value that is visible, certain, and historically permanent.
In commodity markets, prices cannot consistently fall below production cost. Producers close, sell deals, and re-establish strategic alliances.
Bitcoin follows the same principle: when prices fall to $60,000, the least successful miners shut down, the network’s hash rate changes through the Bitcoin crisis, and the cost of creating each new coin drops.
By May 2026, the value of mining approx pass through all Bitcoin mining is sitting around $85,604, and the Bitcoin price trades in the $60,000s – which means the whole network is working on the loss, the configuration that the history starts to recover, and not another fall.
