Bitcoin lags the S&P 500’s 1.9% rally after Sunday’s flush to $73,510 triggered $1B in liquidations | That's TradingNEWS
Key Points
- Bitcoin trades at $75,346, $105 below Strategy’s 849,327-coin average cost of $75,451.
- U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs lost $1.28 billion in five sessions, the worst week since late June.
- A daily close above the $76,513 200-day EMA targets $80,935, 7.4% above current levels.
Bitcoin traded at $75,346.11 at 3:44 p.m. UTC on Monday, November 9, down $620.43 or 0.82% over 24 hours. The day’s range ran from $73,713.20 to $75,452.81, and the token carried a market capitalization of $1.514 trillion on $30.5 billion of 24-hour volume. In the same hour, the S&P 500 was up 1.91% at 7,517.64 and the Nasdaq Composite up 2.35% at 25,157.80, as a 4% drop in Brent crude set off the broadest equity rally since the post-election melt-up. That puts bitcoin 2.7 percentage points behind the S&P 500 on a day when gainers outnumbered losers 563 to 34 on the U.S. stock movers screens.
That gap is the thesis. For most of 2026, bitcoin traded as a high-beta extension of the Nasdaq, rising and falling with the AI capex trade, real yields and the dollar. Monday broke that link. Equities are pricing lower oil, softer inflation and a short-covering rotation. Bitcoin is pricing three things specific to crypto: a Democratic Congress that has buried the industry’s market-structure bill, the aftershocks of the record $6.3 billion theft from Binance, and five straight sessions of net selling from U.S. spot ETFs. Until one of those three turns, bitcoin trades at a discount to the risk appetite around it.
The damage over longer windows is plain. Bitcoin traded at $81,746.43 a month ago, so it has lost 8.8% in four weeks. A year ago it changed hands at $104,711.60, so the 12-month drawdown is 28.8%. From the all-time high of $126,198.07, the token is down 40.3%. Its 52-week range runs from $57,747.77 to $107,428.26, which puts current prices in the lower half of the band. Last week’s 4% decline was the fifth straight weekly loss, the longest losing streak of the year.
The level that matters most this week is not round. Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder, reported 849,327 bitcoins as of November 1 at an average cost of $75,451. At $75,346, the stockpile of the market’s most important structural buyer sits $105 per coin below its cost basis, about $89 million under water on a $64.08 billion position. That makes the $75,000 zone a test of conviction, not just a technical level.
The forecast that follows rests on that framework. Bitcoin is boxed between a $73,027 floor from the August 21 low and a $76,513 ceiling at the 200-day exponential moving average. A daily close outside that $3,486 band decides the next 7% move.
The defining move of the past 24 hours came in the thinnest session of the week. Late Sunday, with U.S. desks closed and Asian liquidity just waking up, bitcoin fell from $75,785 to $73,510 inside one hour, a $2,275 or 3.0% drop. That print was the lowest since August 21. It did not trigger a cascade, but it did something more damaging on the daily chart: Sunday settled at $74,851, the lowest daily close since August 20 and the first close below the September floor of $74,968.
That floor had defined bitcoin’s range for two months. Every test of the $74,968 level in September and October drew buyers, and the token used that shelf to launch the run to $80,935 after last Tuesday’s midterm vote. A close below a level that held for eight weeks flips its role. On Monday, $74,968 became resistance, and the first rebound stalled just above it.
The Monday session followed a classic post-break pattern. Bitcoin dipped to $73,750 in the European morning, slightly above the Sunday low, then found buyers and climbed back to $75,599 as U.S. equity futures accelerated. By mid-afternoon in Europe the token traded at $75,346, which put it 1.8% above the Sunday low but still under the 200-day EMA and the 20-day EMA. A retest of the broken floor from below, with sellers waiting at the old level, defines a market that has lost its footing but has not yet capitulated.
Context makes the flush look worse. Bitcoin topped at $80,935 last week when Democrats’ midterm victories briefly lifted every risk asset on Wednesday. From that peak to the Sunday low, the token shed $7,425, or 9.2%, in four sessions. Over the same stretch the S&P 500 swung 4.4% down on Thursday and recovered 2.2% across Friday and Monday. Bitcoin participated in the downside of that equity cycle and missed the upside.
The weekend trigger was not a single headline. Leverage had rebuilt after the Wednesday bounce, funding stayed positive and the long-to-short ratio across major venues reached 3.09. In a market that crowded and that thin, one burst of selling into a weekend order book was enough to push price through a level the market had treated as permanent. Over $1 billion in positions were liquidated across the crypto market, close to 90% of them longs.
The lesson for this week’s forecast is that the Sunday break needs to be repaired with a daily close, not an intraday spike. Until bitcoin closes above $74,968, the old floor holds as resistance.
No single participant shapes bitcoin’s psychology more than Strategy. The company held 849,327 bitcoins as of November 1, acquired for a total of $64.08 billion at an average of $75,451 per coin. That stockpile equals 4.2% of the 20.11 million bitcoins in circulation and 4.0% of the 21 million maximum supply. At Monday’s $75,346 price, the position is worth $63.99 billion.
The company kept buying into last week’s weakness, but on a much smaller scale than its 2026 peak. Between October 26 and November 1, Strategy added 811 bitcoins at an average of $80,846 for $65.5 million, funded through its at-the-market common stock program. It sold 1,178,552 MSTR shares in that window, raising $164 million in net proceeds. Only $65.5 million went into bitcoin; $98.5 million was held as cash, and the company repurchased 2,092,035 shares of its STRC preferred for $208.2 million. The firm is now spending more on its preferred stock than on bitcoin.
That allocation shift matters as much as the cost basis. Strategy built its position in 2026 through enormous weekly purchases, including 34,164 bitcoins for $2.5 billion in April and 24,869 for $2.01 billion in May. An $811-coin week is a fraction of that pace. The market has noticed. A buyer that once absorbed a full week of new mining supply in a single filing is now buying a few days’ worth.
The stock reflects the same tension. MSTR traded at $128.44 on Monday, down 0.38% from Friday’s $128.93 close, while the Nasdaq rallied 2.35%. When the stock price drops toward the value of the bitcoin the company holds, its ability to issue common shares at a premium shrinks, and so does its buying power. That is a feedback loop: lower bitcoin prices weaken Strategy’s capital-raising ability, which removes demand from the market, which pressures prices further.
Strategy has been here before. As of March 31, 2026, the cost basis of its holdings exceeded fair value, and the company recorded a $1.73 billion deferred tax asset against unrealized losses with an equivalent valuation allowance. Bitcoin then rallied from the $67,000 area in June back above $80,000 by October. A cost-basis test is not automatically bearish.
The level still works as a sentiment gauge. A sustained close above $75,451 tells the market that the largest buyer is back in profit and has room to raise capital. A sustained close below it tells the market that the structural bid is under water and shrinking. That is why the $75,000 to $75,500 band carries more weight this week than its chart history alone would justify.
U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs gave the clearest signal of institutional sentiment last week, and it was a sell signal. The funds recorded $1.2817 billion in net outflows across the five sessions from November 2 to November 6, the worst week since late June. Friday alone saw $411.9 million in net redemptions, the largest single-day outflow of the week, as the October jobs report pushed December Fed hike odds toward 80%. Monday’s flow data will not post until Tuesday.
The week’s flow pattern shows how fragile institutional demand is. Outflows hit $399 million on Monday, November 2, slowed to $116 million on Tuesday, then flipped to a $74.6 million net inflow on Wednesday as bitcoin rallied above $80,000 on the midterm results. That inflow came from Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), which drew $237 million, while the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) shed another $201.2 million. Wednesday’s inflow narrowed 2026 net bitcoin ETF flows to an outflow of $79 million. Thursday and Friday wiped out the rally and much more.
IBIT is the bellwether, and it is in a losing streak. The largest fund in the category recorded at least four straight sessions of outflows into midweek, bringing its 2026 net outflows to $935.2 million. Ether ETFs saw $365.2 million of net outflows over the same week, on top of a seven-day outflow streak that ended briefly on Wednesday.
The ETF channel matters because it is the main path for regulated capital into bitcoin. When ETFs see net redemptions, authorized participants redeem shares and the issuers must sell the underlying bitcoin into the spot market. A $1.28 billion weekly outflow at $75,000 per coin equals 17,000 bitcoins pushed onto the market in five sessions, more than three weeks of new mining supply at the current issuance rate of 450 coins per day.
The flows also follow politics. The Wednesday inflow came as markets briefly read the Democratic sweep as a reduction in political risk premium. The Thursday and Friday outflows came as the regulatory implications sank in and the jobs report revived the Fed hike story. Institutional allocators are not abandoning bitcoin; they are cutting exposure until the policy picture clears.
The flow question will set the tone of this week’s forecast. Another week of outflows above $1 billion would confirm the break of the September floor as a structural shift. A return to daily inflows, led by FBTC or IBIT, would be the first sign that $73,000 to $75,000 is attracting allocators who missed the run to $126,198.
The iShares Bitcoin Trust traded at $42.61 at 10:43 a.m. Eastern on Monday, down $0.27 or 0.63% from Friday’s $42.88 close. The fund opened at $42.15 and traded between $41.97 and $42.62 in the first hour, putting it at the top of its intraday range as U.S. equities extended their rally. IBIT’s net assets stand at $62.3 billion, and its 52-week range runs from $32.84 to $60.36. At $42.61, the fund is 29.4% below its 52-week high and down 13.64% so far in 2026.
The volume figure is the tell. By 10:43 a.m., IBIT had traded 14,179,193 shares, against an average daily volume of 48,040,232. That puts the fund on pace to finish the day well below its normal activity, an odd reading on a day when U.S. equity volumes are elevated across the board. Low ETF volume on a down day in bitcoin, during a strong equity rally, points to a lack of participation rather than active selling. Institutional desks are not dumping IBIT on Monday; they are simply not buying it.
Other crypto ETFs show the same pattern. Fidelity’s FBTC traded at $65.47, down 0.65%. The iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) fell 3.82% to $48.41, nearly matching ether’s 4.55% spot decline. ETF-holder exposure to ether is being cut faster than exposure to bitcoin, consistent with the outflows from ether ETFs that ran seven straight days before Wednesday’s brief reversal.
IBIT’s year-to-date return of negative 13.64% puts the fund behind its broader Digital Assets category, which is down 19.21% on the same trailing measure. On a one-year view, IBIT is down 25.11%. Those numbers frame the institutional problem: the average spot ETF holder who bought in 2025 or early 2026 is under water, and redemption pressure tends to build when holders break even or approach their cost basis.
The fund’s expense ratio stays at 0.25%, and IBIT remains the deepest spot bitcoin vehicle in the U.S. market. That depth makes it the first place both inflows and outflows show up. A week ago, IBIT’s outflow streak was a warning sign; on Monday, the combination of a modest price decline and dormant volume suggests the selling wave has exhausted itself for now without being replaced by new buyers.
For the forecast, the next IBIT inflow print will matter more than the price action. A $200 million single-day inflow into IBIT would mark the first real change in the institutional tone since the midterms. Until then, the ETF complex is a net source of supply.
Bitcoin’s decoupling from equities started with the November 3 midterm elections. Democrats won both chambers of Congress and several statewide offices, and the crypto industry’s legislative program effectively ended overnight. Stocks first rallied on Wednesday as the political risk premium unwound, then collapsed on Thursday as markets priced tighter rules for AI data centers. Crypto went through the same arc but has not shared in the recovery.
The CLARITY Act is the central casualty. The crypto market-structure bill, which would have split oversight of digital assets between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, failed to clear the Senate’s 60-vote procedural threshold in a 49 to 50 vote. The current version expires when the 119th Congress ends on January 3, 2027. Industry hopes now rest on a lame-duck session or entirely new legislation in 2027, under a Democratic majority that has shown no appetite for the bill in its current form.
The committee map is the bigger problem. With Democrats in control of the Senate, Senator Elizabeth Warren is expected to chair the Senate Banking Committee. She has led opposition to the CLARITY Act, pushed for an ethics provision targeting the President’s crypto businesses and backed strict enforcement of securities laws against digital-asset firms. Congressional Democrats have also signaled they will investigate the President’s crypto ventures, and tokens linked to the President led crypto’s losses in the days after the midterm sweep.
The executive branch still matters. The White House keeps its veto power until January 2029, so no anti-crypto legislation can pass without overriding it. The current SEC and CFTC chairs have both signaled plans to keep advancing digital-asset rules through regulation if Congress does not act. That keeps the floor under the policy outlook firmer than it would be under a hostile administration.
The market’s problem is timing, not catastrophe. Crypto rallied through most of 2025 and early 2026 on expectations that a clear federal framework would unlock bank participation, stablecoin integration and institutional capital at scale. That timeline has slipped from 2026 to 2029 at the earliest. Bitcoin is now repricing a two-year delay in the regulatory catalyst that many allocators had built into their models.
That is why the token is not rallying with stocks. Equities are being driven by oil, rates and earnings. Bitcoin’s marginal buyer is an institution waiting for regulatory clarity, and that buyer was just told to wait two more years. The repricing does not need to be complete for bitcoin to stabilize, but it explains why every bounce since Wednesday has run into supply.
The second crypto-specific weight on bitcoin is the October 29 breach at Binance, the largest exchange by volume. Hackers moved $6.36 billion out of Binance wallets across ten blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes, the largest cryptocurrency theft on record and more than four times the $1.5 billion Bybit hack of February 2025. The Federal Bureau of Investigation attributed the attack to North Korea on October 31. Bitcoin fell 3.2% on the night of the hack to below $79,000, then broke under $77,000 the next day for the first time in over a month.
Binance moved quickly to contain the damage. The exchange said it had set aside $6.34 billion of company funds, including $5 billion already held in the affected assets, and that customers would not bear any losses. Roughly $3 billion of the stolen assets was frozen on-chain. Tether froze about $1.6 billion of its USDT stablecoin linked to the attack, and Circle froze more than $800 million of USDC. Binance said on November 2 that it had replenished 95% of the stolen funds from its own reserves.
The withdrawal test came on November 1. Binance began restoring withdrawals in phases at 6:00 a.m. UTC, starting with the bitcoin network. Between 6:00 and 15:30 UTC, customers withdrew $4.649 billion and deposited $1.01 billion, a net outflow of $3.64 billion in nine and a half hours. That equaled 2.1% of the exchange’s $171 billion in total assets as of its October 28 proof-of-reserves. Binance said withdrawal volume declined from that initial peak and stabilized.
The exchange survived the run. The market cost is still showing up. A record theft followed by a $3.64 billion single-day net outflow drains liquidity from the largest venue in crypto, and reports of a departure in the exchange’s finance leadership this week added to the noise. BNB, Binance’s native token, traded at $690.59 on Monday, down 1.05% on the day and 31.1% over 52 weeks.
The hack also feeds directly into the political story. A record North Korean theft from an exchange whose founder received a presidential pardon gives the incoming Democratic majority a ready-made case for tighter oversight of offshore venues, stablecoin issuers and custody rules. Every hearing on the breach in 2027 becomes a platform for the legislative agenda the industry spent 2025 and 2026 trying to avoid.
For price, the hack’s legacy is a risk premium, not a solvency concern. Binance has covered the losses and kept operating. But the combination of a record breach, a large withdrawal wave and a hostile Congress keeps bitcoin trading at a discount to the risk appetite in equities.
The derivatives market explains why Sunday’s break happened so fast and why the rebound has been so tentative. Over $1 billion in positions were liquidated across the crypto market during the flush, close to 90% of them longs. In the four hours around the low alone, $803 million of positions were forced out. Ether liquidations ran nearly double bitcoin’s, in line with ether’s larger percentage decline.
What survived the flush is the more important signal. Funding rates stayed positive through the drop, which means long positions are still paying shorts to hold their exposure. In a capitulation, funding flips negative as shorts take control and longs are washed out. Positive funding after a $1 billion liquidation event says the market cleared the weakest leverage but did not reset sentiment. Plenty of bullish positioning remains.
The long-to-short ratio across major exchanges stood at 3.09, so long accounts outnumber shorts by more than 3 to 1. Open interest across major venues eased to $38.3 billion. That retreat confirms forced deleveraging took place, but the absolute level is still elevated for a market trading 40% below its all-time high. Leverage has not left the system; it has been trimmed.
That combination sets up a two-sided risk. On the downside, a crowded long base with positive funding is fuel for another flush if price breaks the $73,027 August low. A thin weekend or an adverse CPI print could trigger the next wave of forced selling, and with liquidity drained by the Binance outflows, order books are less able to absorb it. On the upside, a sharp move back above $76,513 would catch the remaining shorts and force them to cover, but the positioning data suggests shorts are not crowded enough to drive a large squeeze.
The Fear & Greed Index sits at 29, in “fear” territory, and barely moved from 28 a day earlier despite the flush. That is unusual. Sentiment indicators normally fall sharply into a new low; a muted reading suggests participants had already priced most of the bad news and the Sunday break was a positioning event rather than a fresh sentiment shock.
For the forecast, the derivatives market argues against a straight-line recovery. A durable bottom usually needs funding to turn negative, open interest to fall further and fear readings to drop into the teens. None of those conditions holds on Monday. The setup favors a choppy range with downside tail risk rather than a V-shaped rebound back to $80,000.
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The altcoin complex is bleeding faster than bitcoin, which is pushing capital toward the largest token by default. Ether traded at $2,137.13 on Monday, down $101.89 or 4.55% on the day, more than five times bitcoin’s 0.82% decline. Ether’s market capitalization fell to $260.97 billion, and the token is down 40.56% over 52 weeks, in a range from $1,506.51 to $3,656.15. Its intraday low touched $2,060 early Monday.
The ETH/BTC ratio dropped to 0.0284 from 0.0295 a day earlier, a 3.7% decline in one session. Ether has underperformed bitcoin throughout the selloff, partly because ether ETFs bled more consistently and partly because ether-based leverage in decentralized finance amplified the liquidation wave. Lido Staked ETH fell 4.67% to $2,131.98, and wrapped staked ether fell 4.93%.
XRP fell 4.32% to $1.10, cutting its market value to $70.05 billion. The token is down 56.05% over 52 weeks and sits $0.11 above its 52-week low of $0.99. Solana dropped 2.32% to $87.52, down 48.47% over 12 months. Dogecoin slipped 1.30% to $0.07, Cardano gained 0.51% to $0.18, and Chainlink was flat at $10.76.
The exceptions are telling. Zcash traded at $1,225.50, down 3.46% on the day but up 132.52% over 52 weeks. Monero slipped 0.71% to $600.41 and is up 54.69% over 12 months. Hyperliquid traded at $76.37, down 1.25% but up 71.27% over 52 weeks. Privacy coins and one high-volume derivatives venue are the only large tokens with strong 12-month returns. That pattern fits a market that is rewarding specific use cases and punishing beta.
Bitcoin’s share of the total crypto market rose to 60.3% on Monday. Rising dominance in a falling market is a defensive signal: capital is not leaving crypto entirely, but it is concentrating in the most liquid, most institutionally held asset. That supports bitcoin’s relative strength without supporting its absolute price.
Stablecoins hold the line. Tether’s USDT carries a $176.8 billion market capitalization and USDC $70.3 billion, both at par. That $247 billion pool of dollar-pegged liquidity sitting on crypto rails is dry powder. When sentiment turns, stablecoins are the first source of buying. On Monday, that capital stayed parked.
Bitcoin is fighting the same macro backdrop that equities rallied through on Monday, without the oil-driven relief that lifted stocks. The October payrolls report, released November 6 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed 165,000 jobs added against expectations of 59,000 to 65,000, unemployment falling to 4.1% and average hourly earnings up 0.4% to $38.00. Markets now price a December rate hike at 76.5% to 80%, up from 67% before the report. The Federal Reserve raised rates in September for the first time in three years and meets next on December 8 and 9.
For bitcoin, the rate path matters more than for most risk assets. The token pays no yield, so every increase in real rates raises the opportunity cost of holding it. The 10-year Treasury yield traded at 4.87% on Monday, up 1 basis point despite a 4.18% drop in Brent crude to $94.21. The 5-year yield rose 2 basis points to 4.67%, and the 30-year held at 5.26%. Bonds are refusing to price the disinflation that oil suggests, which keeps real yields elevated.
The dollar offered only minor relief. The dollar index slipped 0.36% to 101.93, below its 52-week high of 102.95. A weaker dollar usually supports bitcoin, but a 36-basis-point move does not offset the rate pressure from a central bank in tightening mode.
Gold is taking the safe-haven bid instead. Gold futures rose 1.21% to $4,124.20 an ounce on Monday, while bitcoin fell 0.82%. The “digital gold” narrative has not held through this drawdown. When investors want protection from fiscal and inflation risk, they are buying the metal, not the token.
The calendar this week is heavy with macro risk. The October consumer price index lands Tuesday, with consensus at a 0.3% monthly gain. A hot core print would push December hike odds toward certainty and keep real yields high, a direct headwind for bitcoin. Producer prices follow Friday. Fed speakers will also weigh in on how the strong jobs data fits the December decision.
The asymmetry in this backdrop is the key forecasting input. A soft CPI would help equities more than bitcoin, because bitcoin’s specific headwinds from regulation, the Binance hack and ETF flows would remain. A hot CPI would hurt both, and bitcoin’s thinner liquidity and crowded long positioning would amplify the downside. Macro is a headwind for bitcoin this week in nearly every scenario.
Crypto-linked stocks split on Monday along a single line: AI exposure. The miners that have pivoted to hosting AI compute rallied with the semiconductor rebound. Firms tied purely to bitcoin’s price lagged.
TeraWulf (WULF) gained 8.97% to $12.39 on 19.6 million shares. Cipher Digital (CIFR) rose 6.57% to $6.97 on 14.8 million shares. Both have shifted their business models toward leasing data center capacity to AI customers, and they traded Monday as AI infrastructure plays, not bitcoin proxies. IREN, which also hosts AI workloads, slipped 0.12% to $21.61 and is still down 64.04% over 52 weeks after falling more than 14% in last Thursday’s data center selloff. Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) rose 3.19% to $19.36.
The bitcoin-pure names went nowhere. Strategy traded at $128.44, down 0.38% from Friday’s $128.93 close, despite the Nasdaq’s 2.35% gain. Coinbase closed Friday at $134.76 and has not participated in the equity rebound. Circle (CRCL), the USDC issuer, gained 1.68% to $69.02, a modest move for a stock that benefits directly from the stablecoin’s role in freezing hacked Binance funds.
That divergence shows where equity capital is willing to go. Funds are rotating into AI infrastructure suppliers on any sign that the data center buildout survives the midterm politics. Miners with AI hosting contracts ride that wave. Bitcoin treasury companies and exchanges, whose revenue depends on token prices and trading volume, are being left behind, because their primary driver is the regulatory and flow story that is now working against them.
For Strategy in particular, the stock’s flat performance during a strong equity rally points to the funding problem. The company’s ability to issue common stock through its at-the-market program depends on MSTR trading at a premium to the value of its bitcoin. When the stock lags the market and bitcoin sits at the company’s cost basis, that premium compresses and Strategy’s capital-raising capacity shrinks. Its buying power will stay limited until MSTR outperforms.
Coinbase’s stall carries a similar signal. The exchange’s revenue is driven by retail trading volume and custody fees from ETF issuers. Weak ETF flows and subdued retail participation after the Binance hack and the midterms point to a soft fourth quarter for crypto platforms. The equity market is pricing that, not the bitcoin rebound that has yet to arrive.
The chart frames the next move in tight terms. Bitcoin at $75,346 sits inside a $3,486 band between two levels that will decide direction: $73,027 below and $76,513 above.
The floor is the August 21 low at $73,027. The token sits 3.1% above it, and Sunday’s flush stopped $483 short of it at $73,510. Monday’s dip to $73,713.20 also held above it. A daily close below $73,027 would open what the chart shows as a thin zone: only one August session traded between $70,000 and $73,000, so there is little historical volume to slow a decline through that range. The next real support is $70,000, the August 19 high, 7.1% below current levels.
The ceiling is the 200-day exponential moving average at $76,513, 1.5% above spot. A daily close above that average would undo Sunday’s break and put bitcoin back above its long-term trend measure for the first time since the post-election high. The 20-day EMA sits near $78,490, 4.2% above spot, and would be the next target on a recovery.
Between those two levels, a tightly packed cluster of resistance runs through the current price. The Friday low of $74,888, the September floor at $74,968, Strategy’s $75,451 cost basis and the Monday high near $75,599 all sit within $711 of each other. That cluster explains why every rebound above $75,000 on Monday drew supply. It also means a clean break above $75,600 would clear most of the nearby resistance in one move.
The daily trend indicators lean negative. Price trades below all three daily moving averages and below the hourly averages as well. The daily Bollinger lower boundary sits at $74,015.94, and the first daily pivot support sits at $73,507.63, almost exactly the Sunday low. The daily pivot at $74,853.81 sits just below spot, so bitcoin is trading slightly above its pivot after a morning spent below it.
The technical setup does not yet show a bottom. A durable low usually forms with a capitulation volume spike and a quick reclaim of a broken level. Sunday’s flush had the spike but not the reclaim: bitcoin is still below the September floor on a closing basis. Until it closes above $74,968, and more convincingly above $76,513, the trend favors sellers, with the $73,027 August low as the line that cannot break.
The near-term forecast for bitcoin comes down to three scenarios, each defined by a daily close.
The base case, which we weight most heavily, is a range between $73,000 and $78,000 through the CPI and PPI releases. Bitcoin holds above the August 21 low at $73,027 but cannot clear the 200-day EMA at $76,513 while ETF outflows continue and positioning stays long-heavy. In this scenario, the token chops around Strategy’s $75,451 cost basis and the $74,968 September floor, with intraday swings of 2% to 3% in both directions. The ETF flow data released Tuesday and the October CPI on the same day set the tone.
The bull case needs three conditions: a daily close above $76,513, a return to net ETF inflows led by IBIT or FBTC, and a soft core CPI that pulls December hike odds below 70%. If all three line up, the target is the 20-day EMA near $78,490, then the post-election high at $80,935, 7.4% above current levels. A move beyond that would need a change in the political picture or a large institutional buyer, neither of which is visible this week.
The bear case is triggered by a daily close below $73,027. That would open the thin August zone, with $70,000 as the next support, 7.1% below spot. Positive funding and a 3.09 long-to-short ratio leave enough leverage in the system to fuel another liquidation wave, and Binance’s withdrawal drain has reduced the depth of the order books that would absorb it. A hot CPI on Tuesday is the most likely catalyst for this scenario. Below $70,000, the 52-week low of $57,747.77 becomes the reference point, but a move that deep would need a broader risk-off event in equities.
The verdict is a bearish bias with a defined upside trigger. Bitcoin is trading at a discount to equities because of three crypto-specific problems: a Democratic Congress that has frozen the regulatory catalyst until at least 2029, the aftershock of a record $6.3 billion theft at the largest exchange, and $1.28 billion of ETF outflows in a single week. None of those resolves this week. The macro backdrop, with December hike odds near 80% and the 10-year at 4.87%, adds pressure rather than relief. Sunday’s close below the $74,968 September floor shifted the chart’s balance to sellers, and the rebound to $75,346 has not yet repaired it.
The trigger is a daily close above $76,513. Until that happens, rallies into the $75,000 to $76,500 band are supply, and the downside risk to $70,000 is larger than the upside to $80,935. A close above the 200-day EMA, confirmed by a return to ETF inflows, flips the bias to neutral and puts $80,935 back in play. A close below $73,027 confirms the bear case and targets $70,000. Bitcoin is waiting on Tuesday’s ETF flows and CPI print to pick a side.
