Bitcoin Below $78,000: The Bear Case Plays Out — Where the Selling Stops
Weekend edition: the scenario this column sketched as the bear case on Thursday has arrived on schedule, and the only question left is where it ends.
Bitcoin spent the weekend grinding between $77,000 and $78,300, closing Saturday at $77,435 and Sunday at $78,248 — a feeble bounce that, so far, changes nothing. The token is down 8% from last week’s failed breakout, trading below every short-term moving average, with lower highs in place on every time frame from the hourly to the daily. The floor at $80,000 has been broken, retested from beneath (Friday’s recovery stalled at $78,647, more than a thousand dollars below the broken level), and rejected. Technically, this is a downtrend, and downtrends end at support, not at hope.
Where the supports actually live
The map below current prices is more concrete than most crypto drawdowns, because bitcoin spent the middle of 2026 building a genuine base with identifiable rungs. The first support is the zone around $77,400 — the July pivot that produced Thursday’s bounce. It’s being tested as this is written, and its quality is questionable: bounces off first supports after breakdowns are typically weak, and this one has been very weak. The second rung is $76,000–$75,200: the measured-move target of the broken range, and the level where the June correction finally found its floor. If $77,400 gives way, $75,200 is the destination the structure points to, and it should be treated as the first location where a durable bottom becomes plausible rather than merely possible.
Below $75,200 lies the serious support: the summer’s base at $73,500, and beneath that the June low at $72,400. A trip to those levels would complete a full 14% correction from the October high and would, in all likelihood, represent the terminal washout of this cycle’s mid-section — the kind of decline that resets sentiment, exhausts leverage, and hands the market back to the structural buyers at prices they last saw in the spring. Nobody enjoys the journey. Everyone respects the destination.
What the flow data says underneath
Beneath the price damage, the structural picture has held up better than the chart suggests. Weekend volume of roughly $12–13 billion a day is thin — normal for a weekend, but also a sign that the decline is no longer attracting the panic participation that marks final lows. ETF flows turned negative midweek but stabilized; the outflows were modest rather than disorderly. Long-term holder supply has plateaued rather than declined, which in past cycles has marked the zone where selling pressure from strong hands ends. None of this calls the bottom. All of it describes a market approaching, rather than entering, its terminal phase.
The leverage picture deserves emphasis because it’s the market’s hidden insurance. Futures open interest has fallen to its lowest level since before the October range began. Funding rates are negative. The options market is pricing downside with genuine fear. This is what a cleansed market looks like — the exact opposite of May’s top, when leverage was extreme and euphoria universal. Liquidations this week have been painful precisely because they were the last ones; the fuel for further forced selling is largely spent.
The three paths into November
Path one: the drift continues. The market grinds sideways-to-lower through the first week of November, tests $75,200, and bases — the path of maximum patience and minimum drama, and historically the most common ending to crypto corrections of this size.
Path two: the flush. Some macro shock — a hot inflation print, an equity credit event, a renewed dollar surge — takes bitcoin through $77,400 quickly and violently, probing $73,500 before the buyers appear. The flush is faster, scarier, and produces the better entry, and it cannot be ruled out while equities sit two weeks into their own correction with credit spreads finally twitching.
Path three, the one requiring the most humility to name: the bear case has already played out. The measured move to $75,200 is close, the leverage is cleansed, sentiment is at 2026 lows, and the structural buyers have spent the weekend absorbing supply at $77,000. If the market holds $77,400 through Monday’s full liquidity session and reclaims $79,500, the downtrend thesis fails and the range’s ghost lives again at lower altitude. It’s the least likely path by the chart and the most supported by the flows.
Weekend levels: support $77,400, then $76,000 and $75,200; resistance $78,650, then the broken floor at $80,000 — now the ceiling that defines the bear case until reclaimed. The bear case has played out. The only remaining question is whether it knows when to stop.
Disclaimer: This is market commentary, not investment advice. Trading FX, commodities, equities and crypto carries substantial risk of loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
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