Bitcoin Closes Week Below 50-Week Average for the First Time Since September

Bitcoin (BTC) ended the trading week on November 8, 2026, at $74,968, which is 0.7% below the 50-week moving average. This interrupted a series of 7 consecutive weekly closings above the indicator, which the research company Galaxy considers as one of the benchmarks for assessing the end of a bear market.

The 50-week moving average is calculated as the arithmetic mean of closing prices over the last 50 weeks. Bitcoin surpassed it on September 20, when it ended the week at $81,195, 12 weeks after the June low.

Since then, BTC has decreased by 7.7% relative to the September level. However, the closing on November 8 remained 26% above the lowest weekly closing of the current cycle - $59,517, recorded on June 28.

How Bitcoin behaved after similar declines

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy, analyzed historical cases of Bitcoin returning above the 50-week average after the presumed end of a bear market.

In his sample of 5 cases, including September 2026, two previous returns above the indicator did not hold. This occurred in the cycles of 2011–2012 and 2019–2020.

In January 2012, BTC surpassed the average, but fell below it again after 3 weeks. The price remained below the indicator for 20 weeks, but the subsequent minimum weekly closing at $4.39 did not update the low of the previous bear market.

A similar situation was observed after May 2019. Bitcoin stayed above the average for 29 weeks, then repeatedly fell below it, including during the market crash in March 2020. The minimum closing at $5,359 remained 68% above the 2018 low.

In the other two cases, in 2015 and 2023, the return above the average was maintained until the recovery of the previous historical high.

Why the 2026 situation is different

Thorn points to the distance between the price returning above the indicator and the previous market low.

In September 2026, Bitcoin was approximately 36% above the June low. For comparison, during similar events in 2019 and 2012, this margin was about 79% and 223%, respectively.

The current decline from the September closing has already reached 7.7%. This exceeds the 6.5% drop observed during the retesting of the average in 2020.

However, historical comparisons do not allow for determining the further trajectory of the price. For example, repeating the scale of the 2012 decline by 38.1% from September's $81,195 would mean a price of about $50,260. This is purely a mathematical scenario, not a forecast by Galaxy.

The analyst separately emphasized that the small number of historical observations does not allow such patterns to be considered a reliable indicator of future BTC movements.

What levels are important for assessing the market trend

At the time of publication, BeInCrypto reported the 50-week moving average was around $75,488, and the 200-week average was around $67,746.

The latter serves as an additional long-term benchmark in Galaxy's analysis. However, the price being above or below these values does not in itself guarantee the market's future direction.

To maintain Thorn's hypothesis of the bear market ending in June, it is crucial that Bitcoin does not update the minimum weekly closing at $59,517.

However, historical statistics also include premature recovery signals: in December 2021 and March 2022, BTC briefly returned above the 50-week average, only to continue declining afterwards.

Thus, the closing on November 8 weakened one of the technical arguments in favor of the bear market's end, but did not refute the hypothesis of the June low. Its further assessment will depend on subsequent weekly closings.