Bitcoin lags a 1.77% Nasdaq rally as October CPI’s 0.4% rise keeps a December Fed hike near-certain and ETF selling stays heavy | That's TradingNEWS
Key Points
- Spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $1.14B over four straight sessions, with $95.0M out on November 10.
- Strategy’s 850,364 BTC are worth $62.85B, 2.1% below their $64.16B cost at a $75,456 average.
- BTC-USD needs a close above the $76,272 200-day EMA to open an 8.2% run to $80,000.
Bitcoin traded at $73,905.01 late Wednesday morning in New York, up $775 or 1.06% after an overnight drop to a three-month low. Over the past 24 hours it has traded between $72,744.19 and $75,328.46. At 7:30 a.m. ET it was at $73,937.78, and at 8:00 a.m. it was at $73,818, down $479 or 0.64% from Tuesday morning. At this price Bitcoin’s market value is $1.48 trillion, with $35.81 billion traded in the last 24 hours. That turnover is only 2.4% of its market value, light for a market sitting near a key level.
Bitcoin is not joining the equity rebound. On the same morning the Nasdaq Composite rose 1.77% to 25,510.46, the S&P 500 gained 1.09% to 7,603.10, and Nvidia bounced 3.86% to $175.31 on CoreWeave’s earnings. Bitcoin has traded like a high-risk tech stock for most of 2026, so it would normally follow that move higher. Today it is barely moving. In this market Bitcoin reacts to interest rates and fund flows, not to AI earnings, and both of those are working against it.
The bigger picture is weak. One month ago Bitcoin traded at $82,870.49, so it has lost 10.8% since mid-October. One year ago it was $103,040.87, so it is down 28.3% year over year. It is 41.4% below its October 2025 record of $126,080. The overnight low near $72,744 is the lowest level since August, after a flash crash on November 8 took $2,200 off the price in 15 minutes and sent it to $73,900.
Tuesday’s October consumer price index triggered this week’s selling. The 10-year Treasury yield briefly rose above 5%, and traders now expect a Federal Reserve rate hike in December with near certainty. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have had four straight days of outflows totaling $1.14 billion. Strategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, now holds coins worth less than it paid for them, and a decision tonight could remove it from MSCI’s global stock indexes.
The broader crypto market is weaker still. Total crypto market value is $2.49 trillion, down 3.2% over seven days. Bitcoin’s share has climbed to 60.3%, from 59.89% a week earlier. Ether trades at $2,054, XRP at $1.06 and Solana at $83. Money is not leaving crypto all at once. It is moving from smaller coins into Bitcoin, the most liquid asset, which is typical when rising rates force investors to cut risk. Until fund flows turn positive, Bitcoin’s bounces are likely to stay small.
The October consumer price index rose 0.4% for the month, above the 0.3% forecast. Core CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.3% against a 0.2% forecast. Core inflation has now beaten forecasts three months in a row. Headline inflation was 0.6% in September, so the monthly pace slowed, but both readings beat expectations. Shelter accounted for more than 30% of the increase, so inflation is spreading beyond energy prices tied to the Iran conflict.
Bitcoin fell below $74,000 minutes after the 8:30 a.m. ET release on Tuesday. Bond yields jumped at the same time. The 2-year Treasury yield rose 17 basis points, its biggest one-day jump since April 2025. The 10-year rose as much as 15 basis points to 5.015%, and the 30-year rose 11 basis points to 5.37%. Today the 10-year is at 4.998%, up 1.5 basis points, but cash Treasuries are closed for Veterans Day. The bond market’s full verdict on Tuesday’s inflation data waits until Thursday.
The link to Bitcoin is simple. Bitcoin pays no interest. When safe 10-year Treasuries pay 5%, every dollar held in Bitcoin gives up that guaranteed income. A 5% yield pays $3,695 a year on $73,905, nothing to sneeze at for an asset that has fallen 10.8% in a month. Higher yields also push up the dollar. The U.S. Dollar Index rose 0.30% to 102.52 today, and USD/JPY climbed 0.24% to 159.13. A stronger dollar tightens global funding conditions and reduces the spare cash that flows into crypto.
The data also has a gap. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published no year-over-year inflation rate for October, because the 2025 government shutdown stopped it from collecting October 2025 prices. The latest annual rate is September’s 3.7%, the highest since May. Two straight core readings of 0.3% annualize to above 3.5%. That is far above the Fed’s 2% target, and it leaves policymakers little room to ease.
The calendar keeps the pressure on. November CPI comes out December 10, the day after the Fed’s December 8–9 meeting ends. October is the last inflation report the Fed will see before it votes. A cooler reading cannot arrive before the decision. A rebound in Bitcoin therefore has to come from somewhere other than inflation data: fund flows, leveraged traders closing short bets, or a sustained drop in the 10-year below 4.9%. None of those has happened yet.
Bitcoin’s move fits the pattern of the past six months. On October 14, after the September CPI also came in hot, Bitcoin fell below $82,000 the same day. That puts two months in a row of inflation data pushing the price down, and each low came in below the last. Tuesday’s drop extended that pattern instead of breaking it.
The Federal Reserve’s target range is 3.75% to 4.00% after a unanimous quarter-point hike on September 16, its first since July 2023. At the October 28 FOMC meeting, policymakers held rates steady in a 10-2 vote. Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack dissented, preferring another quarter-point hike. The September projections put the median year-end rate at 4.1%, implying one more hike in 2026.
Markets have moved well past that. Fed funds futures put the odds of a December hike between 90% and 96.3% this week. Prediction markets showed 97% after the CPI release. Traders now expect three more hikes, up from two a week ago. They also see an 11% chance of a 50-basis-point hike on December 9. Governor Christopher Waller made the larger hike a live option. Speaking before Tuesday’s data, he said a 50-basis-point move should be on the table if core CPI came in at 0.3%, and it did. Governor Michelle Bowman added that inflation is broadening and further hikes may be needed.
Rate hikes hit Bitcoin harder than stocks because Bitcoin has no earnings. Nvidia can offset a higher discount rate with $108.8 billion in expected quarterly revenue, and CoreWeave can point to a $13.0 to $13.3 billion revenue forecast. Bitcoin’s price depends only on new buyers and on how much leverage traders can afford. Every hike priced into 2027 raises the cost of that leverage. Funding rates on perpetual futures move with short-term interest rates, so higher Fed rates make leveraged long positions more expensive to hold.
Policy expectations for 2026 have reversed. In June the consensus still expected two rate cuts by year-end. Now the debate is whether the Fed hikes 25 or 50 basis points in December, and some forecasts push the first cut out to December 2027. One forecast calls for quarter-point hikes in December and March, which would take the funds rate to 4.25%–4.50% by spring 2027. For Bitcoin, the gap between the cuts priced in June and the hikes priced in November roughly matches the drop from the summer’s $87,315.30 high to today’s $73,905.
The December meeting also brings new Fed projections, the first since September. If the median forecast for 2027 shows a higher rate, the market’s three-hike pricing is confirmed, and Bitcoin’s rallies will keep stalling below $80,000. If projections suggest one more hike is enough, yields could ease. That would let Bitcoin trade more on fund flows and less on rate fears. The Fed decision on December 9 is the most important macro date for Bitcoin this quarter. Today’s 1.06% gain changes none of this.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S. had their fourth straight day of outflows on November 10, losing $95.0 million. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) lost $78.2 million and Fidelity’s FBTC lost $36.8 million. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT, which charges a 0.14% fee, took in $20.0 million. The four-day run of redemptions totals $1.14 billion: $430.2 million on November 5, $411.9 million on November 6, $201.0 million on November 9 and $95.0 million on November 10.
November has been heavily negative so far. Net outflows were $398.6 million on November 2 and $115.6 million on November 3, with a single inflow day of $74.6 million on November 4. The first week of the month lost $1.28 billion in total, the biggest weekly outflow since late June. Including November 9 and 10, the month-to-date total is $1.58 billion in net outflows across seven sessions, an average loss of $225 million a day.
The year-to-date picture has flipped. Three weeks ago spot Bitcoin ETFs were up $1.43 billion in net inflows for 2026. As of November 10, they show more than $1.1 billion in net outflows for the year. Total assets across the funds are $92.82 billion. November’s $1.58 billion of redemptions equals 1.7% of that total, a big amount for a single month. Since launch, net inflows total $55.47 billion. That figure includes $28.11 billion that has left Grayscale’s GBTC since it converted to an ETF.
These flows move the price directly. When an ETF has net redemptions, the firms that create and redeem ETF shares must sell or deliver the underlying Bitcoin. That puts real coins on the market, not just paper positions. When daily outflows are in the hundreds of millions, they absorb all the demand from dip buyers. That explains why Bitcoin keeps hitting lower highs even when stocks rally.
The latest data points to some relief. The $95.0 million outflow on November 10 was the smallest of the four-day streak. It was less than half of November 9’s $201.0 million and less than a quarter of November 5’s $430.2 million. The selling is slowing, though it has not reversed. Morgan Stanley’s MSBT took in $22.1 million on November 9 and $20.0 million on November 10, so some lower-cost funds are still drawing money. Those small inflows are far smaller than IBIT’s redemptions.
The level to watch is a single day of net inflows above $200 million. The last time ETF flows were consistently positive, Bitcoin traded above $82,000. One inflow day would not prove a turn, but a run of them would. Until that happens, ETF redemptions remain the most reliable source of daily selling.
IBIT is the main source of the outflows. The fund has lost money on eight straight trading days, starting October 30. Through November 9, the streak totaled $1.66 billion. In November alone, IBIT redemptions reached $1.50 billion through November 10: $405.3 million on November 2, $95.0 million on November 3, $201.2 million on November 4, $105.0 million on November 5, $403.0 million on November 6, $213.2 million on November 9 and $78.2 million on November 10.
On several days, IBIT’s outflows exceeded the total for all funds combined. On November 2, IBIT lost $405.3 million while the group lost $398.6 million, because Fidelity’s FBTC took in $6.7 million. On November 4, IBIT lost $201.2 million while FBTC took in $236.7 million, turning the group’s day into a $74.6 million net inflow. On November 9, IBIT lost $213.2 million against a group total of $201.0 million. This pattern shows the selling comes from the investors who use IBIT, mainly large wealth platforms and model portfolios. It is not a broad exit by every type of Bitcoin investor.
The size matters because IBIT is the market’s main Bitcoin fund. Its net assets were $60.7 billion as of November 6. Since launch it has taken in $64.81 billion in net inflows, more than all other U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs combined. The week of November 2–6 accounted for $1.21 billion of the group’s $1.28 billion in withdrawals, equal to 2% of IBIT’s assets in five sessions. Outside IBIT, the other funds have lost $3.8 billion in net outflows for 2026.
The selling fits the macro picture. IBIT holders are mostly financial advisers and institutions that rebalance by rules. When volatility rises and Treasuries pay 5%, those models cut riskier holdings. The same investors were likely trimming growth stocks during the November 5 tech selloff, when the S&P 500 fell 4.4% and the Nasdaq dropped 5.5%. Bitcoin ETFs sit in the same risk category, so they get sold with growth stocks.
Today’s stock rebound has not yet turned into ETF buying. Thursday’s flow data, covering Wednesday’s session, will show whether the 1.77% Nasdaq gain brought any rebalancing back into IBIT. If IBIT’s streak ends at eight sessions with a net inflow, that would be the first sign that the investors who sold in November are coming back. A ninth straight outflow, especially one above $100 million, would show that institutions are still reducing Bitcoin into year-end.
Strategy now holds coins worth less than it paid for them. According to its November 9 SEC filing, the company bought 1,036 BTC from November 2 to November 8 for $81.9 million, an average of $79,012 per coin. That brings its holdings to 850,364 BTC, acquired for $64.16 billion at an average of $75,456 per coin, including fees. At $73,905, the holdings are worth $62.85 billion. That leaves a paper loss of $1.31 billion, 2.1% below cost. Its holdings equal 4.05% of Bitcoin’s 21 million maximum supply.
Strategy’s capital is going elsewhere, and that shift matters for Bitcoin. Last week the company raised $283.8 million in net proceeds by selling 2.05 million shares of its MSTR common stock through an at-the-market offering. It used $188.3 million to buy back 1.89 million shares of its STRC preferred stock. Only $81.9 million went to Bitcoin, and $13.6 million went to cash. The week before, it spent $208.2 million on STRC buybacks and $65.5 million on Bitcoin. Since the start of October, Strategy has spent $1.06 billion buying back STRC, almost five times the $219.7 million it spent on Bitcoin.
For years Strategy was Bitcoin’s largest steady buyer. It raised money by selling stock and preferred shares, then turned that cash into coins. That buying has now slowed to tens of millions of dollars a week, while ETFs are losing hundreds of millions a day. The company is putting cash into supporting its preferred shares rather than buying more Bitcoin. Its separate U.S. dollar reserve fell to $4.77 billion from $4.79 billion after it drew $21.1 million to pay preferred dividends. Its cash balance rose to $146.2 million from $132.7 million.
MSTR stock has been hit hard. It closed at $121.07 on November 10, down 3.60% for the day and 6.4% below the $129.30 close on November 5. Over two weeks the stock has fallen 17%. A falling stock makes it more expensive for Strategy to raise money by issuing shares. Each new share it sells now buys less Bitcoin than before. That squeezes the company’s main way of adding coins.
Strategy is not a forced seller. Its $4.77 billion dollar reserve covers its dividend and interest payments for years, and management has repeatedly said it has no plan to sell Bitcoin. The concern is about lost demand rather than new supply. A Strategy that buys $80 million a week can no longer offset ETF redemptions the way it did in 2024 and 2025. Bitcoin needs to win back the $75,456 cost basis to ease that pressure, because institutions and the press will keep focusing on Strategy’s unrealized loss until it does.
MSCI publishes its final list of “non-operating companies” for its Global Investable Market Indexes shortly after 11:00 p.m. CET tonight. Any changes take effect after the market closes on November 30. MSCI finalized rules on October 15 that make companies resembling investment funds, rather than operating businesses, ineligible for its indexes. The new method replaces an interim rule that targeted companies holding at least 50% of their assets in digital assets. A May 2026 simulation flagged Strategy, Metaplanet and Yellow Cake for removal. A watch list also includes Ether treasury company SharpLink, TON Strategy and DeFi Development.
Strategy has said in its third-quarter report that it expects its common stock to be excluded. The company estimates that funds tracking the affected MSCI indexes hold 13 million MSTR shares, 3.1% of its outstanding shares. At the $121.07 close, those shares are worth $1.57 billion. An earlier estimate, based on the original digital-asset proposal, put possible forced selling at up to $2.8 billion. That figure could reach $8.8 billion if other index providers follow MSCI.
Exclusion would not force Strategy to sell Bitcoin. Index funds would sell MSTR shares, and the company’s coins would stay on its balance sheet. The effect on Bitcoin would come indirectly. A lower MSTR price makes stock sales less useful for buying Bitcoin, which shrinks demand that was already slowing. Strategy’s stock had already started trading on index concerns: it fell close to 10% the day after the rules were finalized in mid-October.
The decision lands after U.S. markets close and while Asian markets are open. Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day, so it will react first while MSTR has to wait until Thursday’s premarket. If Strategy is excluded, as expected, much of the selling may already be priced in after a 17% two-week drop. In that case Bitcoin’s reaction could be small, or the uncertainty ending could even spark a relief rally. If Strategy is unexpectedly kept in the indexes, MSTR could jump sharply. In January, when MSCI first chose not to exclude treasury companies, the stock rose 7% in one session.
The second-order risk is the November 30 rebalancing. Index funds tend to sell close to the closing auction on the effective date. In a week with thin holiday trading after Thanksgiving on November 26, that could push MSTR down and weigh on Bitcoin sentiment. Traders should expect volatility in Strategy-linked assets from November 27 to November 30. Any sign that other index providers are following MSCI would turn a single-company event into a broader repricing of crypto treasury companies.
The derivatives market explains why Bitcoin’s dips are so sharp. On November 9 more than $1 billion of crypto futures positions were forcibly closed, including $913 million of long bets. Later forced liquidations dropped 84% to $184 million, so the most fragile positions have already been cleared. The November 8 flash crash, which knocked $2,200 off the price in 15 minutes, came from the same mechanism: a thin order book, crowded long positions and forced selling that fed on itself.
Traders are still heavily long. On Binance’s BTCUSDT pair, 74.7% of accounts hold long positions. That compares with a 30-day average of 67.1% and a recent high of 75.8%. A market where three-quarters of accounts are long after a 10.8% monthly drop is still waiting for a bounce. Those traders become sellers when stop-losses below $73,000 trigger. The largest cluster of long liquidations sits between $73,000 and $73,500, just under the current price. The overnight low of $72,744 briefly broke into that zone before buyers stepped in.
Open interest in Bitcoin futures is $51.89 billion, down only 0.74% over 30 days. The price fell more than 10% in a month, but positioning barely shrank. That means the November drop did not flush out leverage the way the June selloff did. The funding rate on perpetual futures is 0.0091% per day and has been positive in 29 of the last 30 periods, far below the 0.03% level that signals overheating. Longs are paying shorts a small fee to keep positions open. That shows steady demand for leverage, not euphoria.
Options pricing shows short-term fear. One-week 25-delta skew, which measures how much more traders pay for downside protection, rose to 15% on November 6, up from 2% a day earlier. Traders paid up for crash protection during the AI selloff and the run-up to the CPI release. As short-dated options expire after Tuesday’s data, part of that hedging comes off. That reduces some selling pressure from options dealers, but it also leaves the market less protected if bad news hits.
The leverage picture leaves risk on both sides. A clean break below $72,744 would set off the cluster of long liquidations and could push Bitcoin to $69,000 quickly. Above the price, a short-liquidation cluster sits between $76,500 and $77,500. A move through $75,456, Strategy’s cost basis, could squeeze shorts into that zone and lift the price faster than spot buying alone would. Leverage tends to amplify whichever level breaks first.
Sentiment is in fear. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index read 31 on November 10, down 7 points from a week earlier and well below its 30-day average of 48. It fell from 50 on November 5 to 25 on November 7, as the AI stock selloff and ETF redemptions hit at the same time, and has stayed between 28 and 32 since. On social media, the ratio of positive to negative comments about Bitcoin dropped to 0.37 at the end of October. A broader count of bullish versus bearish comments sits at 0.82.
Readings below 30 have often appeared near local lows in past cycles, but timing them is unreliable. The bigger point is that fear and an excess of long positions are showing up together. Usually fear forces leveraged traders to close positions. This time 74.7% of accounts stay long while the index reads fear. Retail traders keep buying dips while institutions keep selling through ETFs. That pattern typically resolves with a final drop that washes out the remaining longs.
Bitcoin’s market share shows where the stress is. Bitcoin dominance rose to 60.3% from 59.89% a week ago, and some measures put it at 61%. Total crypto market value fell 3.2% over seven days to $2.49 trillion, a bigger drop than Bitcoin’s own decline. Ether trades at $2,054, down 2.2% in 24 hours. XRP is at $1.06, down 3.4%, and Solana is at $83, down 3.3%. On November 9, Ether traded at $2,105.60 and Solana at $86.21. Both have fallen further since.
Rising dominance in a falling market means investors are moving away from risk. Money leaves smaller coins faster than Bitcoin, because Bitcoin has deeper liquidity, ETF access and better legal clarity. Spot Ether ETFs had zero flows on November 10 and lost $46.62 million on November 7. Solana ETFs have kept taking in small amounts, $6.78 million on November 10. These figures are tiny next to the hundreds of millions leaving Bitcoin ETFs.
For a Bitcoin forecast, rising dominance cuts both ways. It confirms that Bitcoin is the strongest asset in crypto and the first place money will return when conditions improve. It also shows the whole sector is shrinking, and Bitcoin is falling more slowly than the rest. A real recovery would show up when dominance stalls and smaller coins start to outperform. That would signal investors are willing to take risk again. That shift has not started, and dominance rising above 61% would mean the defensive phase is getting deeper.
Selling is coming from more than ETFs. Mining company MARA Holdings sold 13,597 BTC for $1.1 billion over six weeks. That is significant supply from a company that used to hold its coins as treasury reserves. The network produces 450 BTC a day, so MARA’s sales equal more than four weeks of total network production sold by one company. With Bitcoin at $73,905 and mining profitability under pressure, other miners face the same choice between holding coins and paying for power and equipment.
Market structure is still recovering from the October 29 Binance hack, which affected $6.3 billion in assets. Clients withdrew $4.7 billion from the exchange afterward. Withdrawals of that size reduce liquidity on the world’s largest spot exchange. A thinner order book makes events like the November 8 flash crash more likely, because less resting bid liquidity absorbs a sell order. Separately, the U.S. Treasury took action against exchange MEXC over $16 billion in alleged illicit flows. That has put offshore venues under more scrutiny and pushed some activity toward regulated exchanges with tighter collateral rules.
Washington is moving away from helping crypto. On September 15 the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act on crypto market structure, falling short of the 60 votes needed. Prediction markets now give the bill a 3% chance of becoming law in 2026. The midterm results on November 3 changed control in Congress, and the sweep fed the November 5 tech selloff through fears of tighter technology regulation. A federal market regulator is reportedly preparing charges against prediction-market operator Kalshi. Democrats have also pressed the White House on staff betting on prediction markets.
Big new stock listings are competing for the same money. Anthropic set a $70 to $78 price range for its IPO, which would value it at up to $1.4 trillion and could start trading as soon as next week. OpenAI’s president said the company could be ready to go public next year. Every dollar going into new AI shares is a dollar not available for Bitcoin. That matters most for the growth-focused crossover funds that bought Bitcoin ETFs in 2024 and 2025.
Taken together, supply is increasing while demand is weakening: miner selling, slower Strategy buying, ETF redemptions and regulatory delays. The obvious positive catalysts are missing. No market-structure law is coming, no rate cuts are coming, and no new wave of companies is adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets. A rebound depends on the existing sellers running out, which the smaller November 10 ETF outflow hints at but has not confirmed.
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Bitcoin peaked at $126,080 in October 2025. It has now fallen 41.4% from that high. The 2026 bear market has gone through three phases. The first selloff hit $60,000 on February 6, a drop of more than 50% in four months. Bitcoin fell below $60,000 again on June 5 and hit $59,018 on June 24. It touched $58,188 intraday on June 25, the lowest since September 2024 and 53% below the record. June closed down more than 20%, one of the worst months for Bitcoin in recent years.
From the June 25 low, Bitcoin rallied 50% to a September high of $87,315.30. It is now 15.4% below that high and 27.0% above the June low. Today’s $73,905 sits roughly in the middle of the 2026 range. The rally from June to September shows that buyers appear in force near $60,000. The move down from September shows they did not return near $87,000.
The four-year halving cycle offers a framework. Past bear markets lasted about a year from peak to bottom, and some fell 73% or more. The last halving was in April 2024. October 2025 was 18 months after the halving, in line with past cycle tops. Several cycle models placed the likely bottom in October 2026, consistent with past cycles. So far the June low has held, and the 41.4% drop is far shallower than past bear markets. ETF ownership, which barely existed in earlier cycles, has made the swings smaller in both directions.
The 200-week simple moving average, at $67,764, is the long-term floor that bear markets have historically found. It sits 8.3% below the current price. The June low briefly undercut that level before price recovered. Bitcoin closed below its 50-week moving average of $75,553 on November 9. A weekly close back above that line is the first cycle-level signal that the drop from September is fading.
Today’s environment differs from past cycles. Previous bear markets ended as the Fed eased or held rates steady. In 2026 the Fed is raising rates, with the funds rate at 3.75%–4.00% and markets pricing three more hikes. The cycle theory says a bottom is due. The rate path says a bottom needs the Fed to stop hiking first. That conflict explains why Bitcoin has not made a new low but also cannot hold rallies, and it suggests the range from $58,188 to $87,315 holds until the December 9 Fed decision.
Bitcoin sits below all three of its main daily exponential moving averages: the 20-day at $77,795.54, the 50-day at $79,104.08 and the 200-day at $76,272.32. The 20-day is below the 50-day, which confirms the short-term downtrend. Price is 3.1% below the 200-day EMA, a level that has repeatedly stopped rallies since late October. The 200-day simple moving average sits at $73,200, almost exactly where Bitcoin found support overnight.
Support comes in layers. The 24-hour low at $72,744.19 is the first line. The daily pivot support at $72,534.88 sits just below it, followed by $71,500. A break of $72,744 would trigger the cluster of long liquidations and target $69,000, 6.6% below the current price. Under that, $67,000 to $67,764 marks the 200-week SMA zone and the last major support before the June low of $58,188.
Resistance is also layered. On the hourly chart, Bitcoin needs a close above $73,853.05 to turn short-term momentum up. It is trading just above that level now. The next level is $75,000, a round number Bitcoin lost on November 9. Strategy’s cost basis of $75,456 sits just above it. Reclaiming $75,456 would end the “Strategy is underwater” story, which carries real weight in market psychology. Above that, the 200-day EMA at $76,272 and the short-liquidation cluster between $76,500 and $77,500 are the first serious resistance.
Momentum is weak but not broken. The daily RSI sits in the mid-30s to mid-40s, with one 14-period reading at 46.03. That is below neutral but not yet oversold. The MACD reads -354.25 and is still negative. RSI has not hit oversold during this drop, so sellers have not exhausted themselves. That opens the door to one more push down before a durable low.
The upside target is $80,000, 8.2% above $73,905. Getting there means clearing $75,456, holding above the 200-day EMA, and pushing through the 50-day EMA at $79,104. The next target is $82,870, last month’s price. The September high at $87,315.30 is the full recovery target, 18.1% above the current level. The path to $80,000 requires ETF inflows and a pause in rate-hike pricing, so it depends on macro conditions rather than on the chart alone.
The case for a bounce is real but needs confirmation. ETF outflows slowed to $95.0 million on November 10 from $430.2 million on November 5. Forced liquidations fell 84% after the $1 billion wipeout on November 9. Fear & Greed at 31 has often marked areas where selling dries up. Bitcoin held its 200-day SMA at $73,200 overnight. The MSCI decision tonight removes one uncertainty, whatever the outcome. If stocks keep rallying through Nvidia’s November 17 report and the 10-year yield falls back below 4.9%, Bitcoin has room to retake $75,456 and run toward the $76,500–$77,500 liquidation cluster.
The case against is stronger for now. The Fed is expected to hike on December 9 with near certainty, and there is an 11% chance of 50 basis points. The 10-year yield is at 4.998%, so a risk-free 5% competes directly with an asset that pays nothing. IBIT has had eight straight sessions of redemptions totaling $1.50 billion in November. Strategy’s buying has dropped to $81.9 million a week while it spends twice as much on preferred buybacks. Miners are selling, 74.7% of accounts are still long, and open interest of $51.89 billion has barely shrunk. Bitcoin is rising just 1.06% on a day the Nasdaq rose 1.77%, which shows this bounce depends on fund flows, not on general risk appetite.
The near-term range is $72,744 to $77,500. Within that range, $75,456 is the dividing line. Below it, the market treats Bitcoin’s largest corporate holder as underwater and the trend as down. Above it, the trend starts to look like it is turning. A daily close below $72,744 targets $69,000 and then the 200-week SMA at $67,764. A daily close above $76,272, the 200-day EMA, opens the move to $80,000.
The catalysts are clear. MSCI’s decision comes tonight after 11:00 p.m. CET. Thursday brings weekly jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET, the bond market reopening, and ETF flow data for Wednesday. Nvidia reports on November 17. The MSCI rebalancing takes effect after the November 30 close. The Fed decides on December 9, and November CPI follows on December 10. ETF flows are the most important of these. A run of net inflow days above $200 million would be the clearest sign that the bottom is in.
The forecast is neutral to bearish in the near term, with an upside target of $80,000 if Bitcoin closes above $76,272 and ETF flows turn positive. If $72,744 fails, the risk shifts to $69,000. The longer-term recovery target remains the September high of $87,315.30, which needs the Fed’s hiking cycle to end before buyers return in size.
