Bitcoin is rallying as flagship conference approaches, data shows the gains rarely last

Markets Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Bitcoin is rallying as flagship conference approaches, data shows the gains rarely last After a 50% slide and partial recovery for bitcoin, traders are watching whether the Las Vegas event marks another short-term top for bitcoin. By James Van Straten | Edited by Sheldon Reback Apr 20, 2026, 10:24 a.m. Make preferred on BTC Returns from BTC Conference (Galaxy and Investing.Com) What to know : Bitcoin tends to underperform in the week and month following conferences, despite mixed price action during the events, historical data from 2019–2025 shows. With BTC recovering to around $75,000 from February lows, the key question is whether weaker positioning breaks the usual post-conference selloff pattern. As bitcoin BTC $ 75,415.14 heads into this year’s flagship Bitcoin Conference in Las Vegas next week, traders will be watching for a familiar pattern, a potential “sell-the-news” event that has played out in previous years . The largest cryptocurrency is trading around $75,000, recovering from a local bottom of around $60,000 in early February after collapsing more than 50% from its October all-time high. Data from Galaxy Research and Investing.com spanning 2019 to 2025 show the price of bitcoin tends to rise in the run-up to these conferences, delivers a mixed performance during the event and declines substantially afterward. For instance, bitcoin gained about 3% in the 24 hours before the 2024 event in Nashville (featuring then-presidential candidate Donald Trump) and roughly 10% ahead of the 2019 conference in San Francisco, suggesting positioning builds into peak attention. Price action during the conference is typically subdued as the narrative fails to deliver, and the weakest performance occurs in the days and weeks that follow. In the 2022 bear market, often compared to the current 2026 bear market environment, bitcoin fell just 1% during the Miami conference before sliding nearly 30% over several weeks. Similar post-conference weakness was seen in 2019, 2021 and 2023, where any momentum failed to hold. Even in 2024, when Nashville hosted Trump to outline plans to position the U.S. as a bitcoin superpower, gains during the event were short-lived and marked a local top, just ahead of the yen carry-trade unwind in August that pushed bitcoin as low as $49,000. Conferences tend to coincide with peaks in attention and liquidity as bullish narratives build up to the event, creating conditions for investors to unwind positions. With sentiment still fragile and prices recovering from deep losses, the key question for 2026 is whether Bitcoin Vegas will once again act as an exit liquidity event. Bitcoin News More For You Here's how bitcoin's $7.9 billion April options expiry impact prices By James Van Straten | Edited by Omkar Godbole 31 minutes ago With the bitcoin price above max pain and heavy positioning at $75K, traders face a potential squeeze or pullback into "max pain" expiry. What to know : Bitcoin is trading near $75,000 into a $7.9 billion options expiry, with heavy call positioning and gamma concentration at that level likely to influence short-term price action. The market is effectively bracketed between $62,000 and $75,000, with negative funding rates signaling short positioning that could either fuel a squeeze higher... Read full story Latest Crypto News Here's how bitcoin's $7.9 billion April options expiry impact prices 31 minutes ago A $300 million borrowing spike on Aave signals liquidity crunch after exploit 56 minutes ago Bitcoin, ether, solana slide, oil jumps on renewed U.S.-Iran war risks 4 hours ago LayerZero blames Kelp's setup for $290 million exploit, attributes it to North Korea's Lazarus 5 hours ago The $13 billion DeFi wipeout in two days, and it started with KelpDAO attack 5 hours ago Hack at Vercel sends crypto developers scrambling to lock down API keys 8 hours ago Top Stories 'DeFi is dead': crypto community scrambles after this year's biggest hack exposes contagion risk 16 hours ago The $292 million Kelp exploit: how it happened, and what it means for DeFi 11 hours ago Previewing Consensus' Policy Summit: State of Crypto 15 hours ago Aave sees $6 billion deposit drop as Kelp hack exposes structural risk for DeFi lender 19 hours ago Inside the rise of wrench attacks against crypto holders and how France has become the focus 20 hours ago RaveDAO's RAVE token collapses 90% in a day as exchange probes widen 19 hours ago In this article BTC BTC $ 75,415.14 ◢ 0.22 %