Bitcoin Fails 200-Day Test, Stockton Warns of $40K Support Break

Published by James Harris on June 26, 2026June 26, 2026

Jeremy Grantham repeated his view on Bitcoin this week, calling it a slow fade rather than a sudden collapse, while technical analyst Katie Stockton warned that a break below key support could open a drop toward the low $40,000 range.

Grantham’s critique is not new, but the timing matters. Bitcoin is currently trading roughly 60% below its peak, and Stockton noted it has already fallen about 30% after failing to break above its 200-day moving average, which acted as resistance with unusual precision. Grantham’s specific objection to the store-of-value narrative, pointing to Bitcoin halving in price “for no particular reason in a strong economy,” echoes a tension that has followed Bitcoin through every cycle: the asset behaves like a risk asset when it is supposed to behave like a hedge. Institutional adoption, including spot ETF launches, was supposed to dampen that volatility, and so far it has not. Grantham also compared Bitcoin unfavorably to gold, which he said has held up better despite its own pullback from recent highs.

Stockton, for her part, said she would not rule out a 75% to 80% drawdown from peak, which is in line with prior cycles and would imply prices well below current levels.

The divergence between Grantham and Stockton is not really a disagreement about the present. Grantham is making a decades-long structural argument; Stockton is reading near-term chart structure and flagging that the $59,000 area has now been tested roughly three times, with the next major support sitting in the low $40,000s if it gives way. Stockton’s note that she does not place much weight on the four-year cycle theory is worth holding onto, because a lot of current positioning by retail participants assumes that cycle will reassert itself on schedule. If institutional flows, which are now a primary price signal in a way they were not in 2020 or 2021, do not accelerate into any dip, the historical drawdown floor may not hold. Companies with large Bitcoin holdings on their balance sheets would feel that asymmetrically.

Grantham’s “whimper” framing is the sharpest thing in his argument, and also the hardest to trade against. A gradual loss of relevance does not trigger a liquidation event or a regulatory response. It just means the next cycle attracts less capital than the last, and fewer people notice when it does.