There is leverage from lending BTC for income, but if holders fear counterparty risk and instead pull their coins off exchanges that will only squeeze the shorts and drive the price higher, potentially much higher. I don't think anyone really knows how much short leverage is out there.
If they fear counterparty risk, they will cause a stampede and cause counterparty defaults.
The slowdown in buying from n00bs, can cause the price to drop, which will cause the enriched shorts to pile on (cash out their initial investment and gamble the profits) overshooting to the lower low bottom. Plus all the copycats chasing the trend especially with the "world is falling down" hysteria.
V bottom on steriods. Buy the bottom same as in 2009.
I don't see any of this happening with BTC. I agree with r0ach that it is a lot like cash here. In a bank run, banks fail because people want cash, not deposits. Exchanges may fail because people want physical BTC but it won't make physical BTC less valuable, it will make it a lot more valuable.
But paradoxically people may want USD, especially cash, even more than BTC, which wouldn't be anything new, so the BTC price in USD may fall even though the deleveraging of BTC shorts is acting to push it higher.
r0ach, the problem is that most of BTC's current value is risk-on speculation. If speculators want to de-risk, then BTC goes
down. That competes with wanting hard assets (driving BTC
up), and it isn't clear which effect dominates. I suspect down, because I don't think BTC has matured enough to be viewed as a safe haven by anyone other than a few crypto heads. Someday it may get there, but not yet.