Bitcoin closed at $74,968 on Sunday, finishing about 0.7% below its 50-week moving average of $75,488. The weekly close marked the first time in eight weeks that BTC ended below the widely followed technical level after seven consecutive weeks above it. Early Monday, bitcoin briefly slipped under $74,000 as the broader crypto market sold off.
Galaxy Research's Alex Thorn called the breakdown a potential fakeout rather than evidence that bitcoin's four-year cycle has failed. Galaxy compared the move to the 2011–2012 and 2019–2020 recoveries, when bitcoin also reclaimed the 50-week moving average after a bear-bottom before losing it again. In both prior cases, bitcoin did not make a new lower low on a weekly closing basis. During 2011–2012, it spent another 20 weeks below the average and fell as much as 35% beneath it, but remained roughly 99% above its earlier bottom before setting a new record high within a year. In 2019–2020, bitcoin fell back below the average five times, including an eight-week stretch around the COVID crash, yet remained above its prior cycle low and reached new highs within nine months.
The move coincided with heavy market stress. CoinGlass data showed more than $1.15 billion in total crypto liquidations over 24 hours, including $1.04 billion in long liquidations and $117 million in shorts. Ether traders accounted for over $500 million of the liquidated positions, compared with about $309 million for bitcoin, and 167,764 traders were liquidated. The largest single liquidation order was a $48.2 million ETH-USDT long on Binance.
At the same time, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs posted $1.28 billion in net weekly outflows, the largest since late June. The funds lost money on four of the five trading days and flipped to a combined $914.1 million in net outflows for 2026. BlackRock's IBIT alone lost $403 million on Friday.
Bitcoin currently trades about 26% above its June cycle low of $59,517, the level Galaxy Research describes as the crucial boundary between consolidation and a deeper breakdown. Thorn cautioned that the historical sample is small and the bottom is known only in hindsight. The firm's bullish technical case remains intact only if bitcoin reclaims and holds the 50-week moving average within roughly one month.
