The Crypto Desk desk. Editor: Sam Daodu.
Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) traded at $66,485 on Saturday morning, November 14. That is 3.96% lower in 24 hours and 12.26% lower over seven days. Earlier in the week it was still above $70,000. As recently as October 21, it closed at $84,082.27.
Holders keep coming back to one recovery number: the September rally high of $87,397. If Bitcoin can get back there, the 2026 rebound held. History points the other way. One year after its 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks, Bitcoin was down about 70%, 82% and 75%, according to a CoinDesk cycle comparison.
So the question is whether Bitcoin can reclaim $87,397 in 2027, or whether this decline still has further to fall.
What a Return to $87,397 Would Actually Require
At today’s price, Bitcoin’s market cap (price multiplied by coins in circulation) is about $1.34 trillion. It is still the No. 1 crypto asset. The coin sits 47.27% below the record of $126,080, set on October 6, 2025. It is down 29.85% over the past year and 24.08% year to date.
The climb is harder than the chart suggests because of supply dilution. Miners create new bitcoin with every block they add, so the circulating supply keeps growing. Bitcoin is up just 4.11% from $63,857.77 five years ago. The network is worth more today than it was at that price, because more coins exist. The same logic applies going forward. Every return to an old price level takes more new dollars than the previous visit did.
This cycle has been softer than past ones so far. A one-year loss of about 30% is a long way from 70% or more. But 2022 shows that the first flush is often not the last. Bitcoin hit a June 2022 low of $17,697.70 and then broke lower to $15,598.50 in November. This year already produced a June closing low of $58,566.09. Riding a mania on the way up is one skill; knowing when to step aside is another, and we wrote a free handbook on both halves of that trade.
Three Catalysts That Decide Bitcoin’s Next Leg
Spot ETF Flows Have Flipped to Selling
Spot Bitcoin ETFs are funds that hold actual bitcoin and trade like stocks. Their cumulative net inflow, meaning all the money that has come in minus all the money that has gone out, peaked at $57.96 billion on October 21. By November 13 it had dropped to $54.63 billion. Total net assets fell from $109.31 billion to $86.20 billion over the same period. The last three sessions all lost money: $299.90 million, $284.00 million and $185.45 million. The worst day was October 30, with $643.33 million in outflows.
Flows have moved the price before. Inflows of $526.60 million on October 19 and $528.40 million on October 21 came right before the 30-day high that same week. We covered how fast that reversed in our October look at ETF outflows.
A 5.10% Treasury Yield Competes With Bitcoin
The 10-year Treasury yield reached 5.10%[1] on November 12, up from 4.84% on November 5. The Fed’s target rate has an upper limit of 4.00%[2], unchanged over the past month. Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS | GS Price Prediction) added another rate hike to its Fed outlook after hot inflation data. When a government bond pays 5% with no risk, an asset that pays no yield, like Bitcoin, has to compete for that money. Liquidity has kept growing all the same: M2, a broad measure of money in the economy, was up 5.7%[3] year over year as of September. That money is going somewhere other than Bitcoin.
Leverage Still Has to Wash Out
A liquidation is when an exchange force-closes a borrowed position because the trader’s collateral has run out. On November 13, CoinDesk reported about $1.64 billion in crypto futures liquidations over 24 hours, most of them long positions (trades that profit when prices rise). Prediction markets are pricing more damage. On Kalshi, traders see a 23% chance that Bitcoin falls below $55,000 before January 1, 2027, and a 15% chance it falls below $50,000. They give it a 4% chance of exceeding $100,000 by year-end.
Can Bitcoin Reclaim $87,397 in 2027?
Bitcoin has a low chance of getting back to $87,397 in 2027 unless three things happen in this order. First, ETF flows need to stay positive long enough to push cumulative inflows back above $57.96 billion. Second, the 10-year yield needs to fall back toward its early-November low of 4.84%. Third, the price needs to recover its 200-day moving average (the average closing price over the past 200 days) of $73,043.04, then its 50-day average of $80,558.31. Until Bitcoin closes above $73,043, $87,397 is not a realistic target.
If flows stay negative and yields hold above 5%, the June closing low of $58,566.09 is the level to watch. Closing below it on a daily basis would put Bitcoin on the same path as 2022, where the second low came in below the first. Keep an eye on two triggers: settling above $73,043 means the recovery case is back, and a close below $58,566 means the worst is still ahead.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
After two decades of patrolling the dark corners of suburbia as a police officer, Rich Duprey hung up his badge and gun to begin writing full time about stocks and investing. For the past 20 years, he’s been cruising the markets looking for companies to lock up as long-term holdings in a portfolio while writing extensively on the broad sectors of consumer goods, technology, and industrials. Because his experience isn’t from the typical financial analyst track, Rich is able to break down complex topics into understandable and useful action points for the average investor. His writings have appeared on The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, Yahoo! Finance, Money Morning, and, of course, 24/7 Wall St. He has been featured in both U.S. and international publications, including MarketWatch, Financial Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and USA Today.
