Bitcoin News: Bitcoin Sentiment Was Most Bearish at the Lows and Most Bullish at the Highs — The Inverse of Where Money Is Made

Santiment data covering May 21 through June 4 reveals a textbook example of crowd sentiment working against traders. Peak bullishness hit on May 22, when Bitcoin was near its period high of $78,000. Peak bearishness arrived on June 3, when Bitcoin was near its lows. The crowd was most confident at the top and most fearful at the bottom — precisely the inverse of where conviction historically pays. Bitcoin was trading near $62,400 at the time of writing, down approximately 20% from the late-May peak. Sentiment is not a timing tool — but the pattern of peak conviction at highs and peak fear at lows is a reliable contrarian indicator that the worst of the selling may be closer to over than beginning. The ETF outflow streaks are over — but barely US spot Bitcoin ETFs ended their record 13-day, $4.4 billion outflow streak on Thursday with a net inflow of $3.05 million. Spot Ether ETFs ended their parallel 17-session outflow streak on the same day with $19.30 million flowing entirely into BlackRock's ETHA. The numbers deserve honest framing. A $3 million Bitcoin ETF inflow ending a streak that drained $4.4 billion is not a regime change. It is a pause — potentially meaningful as a directional signal, but far too small in absolute terms to suggest that the institutional selling that has defined May has reversed. The ETF channel that powered Bitcoin's recovery from $60,000 to $83,000 needs consistent inflows measured in hundreds of millions, not single days of single-digit millions, before it can be called a genuine recovery catalyst. Friday's payrolls report: the binary catalyst All of the above sets the stage for Friday's 8:30 AM ET nonfarm payrolls release — the single most important scheduled event for crypto markets since the FOMC minutes failed to deliver a dovish surprise two weeks ago. The logic is binary. A soft payrolls print — below expectations — revives Federal Reserve rate cut expectations under new Chair Kevin Warsh and likely takes risk assets including Bitcoin back up, potentially accelerating the ETF flow reversal that Thursday's tiny inflow hinted at. A hot print — above expectations — extends the rate hike narrative, adds further pressure to an already stressed market, and could push Bitcoin toward the $60,000 round number that multiple analysts have identified as the next critical test. Watch how Bitcoin behaves at $60,000 if it gets tested before or alongside the data. That level — the February cycle low — carries both technical and psychological significance. A clean defense of $60,000 on a hot payrolls print would be a powerful signal of underlying demand. A break below it would validate the $45,000 scenario that Monarq Asset Management's CIO Sam Gaer laid out earlier this week. The macro backdrop: AI momentum is cracking The broader macro environment that has sustained the equity-crypto divergence is showing its first signs of stress. The AI investment boom that drove global equities to record highs has stalled following Broadcom's chip forecast falling short of expectations — casting doubt on the linear AI demand growth narrative that has been one of the primary arguments for continued equity outperformance over crypto. South Korea's KOSPI fell 4.7% on the development. The Korean won and Indonesia's rupiah hit multiyear lows as capital fled emerging Asian markets — a risk-off signal that extends well beyond crypto. If AI momentum continues to fade from its recent peak, the structural divergence between record equity markets and Bitcoin at two-month lows may begin to narrow — though the direction of convergence remains uncertain. What's trending Zcash plummeted 38% after Shielded Labs disclosed a major bug that went undetected for four years — a vulnerability that, if exploited, could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC tokens completely undetected. The disclosure, now patched, represents one of the most significant privacy coin security revelations of the cycle and arrived at the worst possible time for a token that had already given back most of its earlier 2026 gains. JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi announced plans to build a shared tokenized deposit network by the first half of 2027, designed to protect major bank deposits from the competitive threat posed by stablecoins. The initiative represents the most significant collective blockchain commitment from US megabanks to date and validates the stablecoin competition narrative that has been building throughout 2026. The signal to watch: Bitcoin dominance versus altcoins Bitcoin has underperformed an index of altcoins excluding the top ten tokens for several consecutive weeks, with the ratio recently testing a resistance level that has held for over a year. If declines in Zcash, Hyperliquid, and NEAR continue, the Bitcoin dominance ratio is likely to drop further — suggesting that altcoin weakness may accelerate relative to Bitcoin even from current levels. In a market where everything is falling, relative performance matters.