The Numbers
The week starting Sept. 21 saw $BTC open at $81,178 and close at $84,467. No weekly close has been higher since the last week of January, which finished around the same price before a slide that dragged the bitcoin price toward $60,000 in early February.
The same week printed a high of $87,395, reaching prices not seen in over eight months, as trader Martini Guy noted yesterday. It also capped a quarter in which bitcoin’s price gained about 44%, its second-best Q3 on record.
Two other lines broke at once:
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- The close sat above May’s intraday high of $82,850
- It was the second straight weekly close above the 50-week moving average, a trend gauge that averages the last 50 weekly closes (it sits near $78,200)
The Bull Ledger
Prominent bitcoin analyst Crypto Rover, took the loudest victory lap, announcing:
Bitcoin just closed its first weekly candle above the May highs and its second weekly candle above the 50W moving average. Conclusion: the bear market is over.
The bulls have more than one chart on their side, with $BTC advocate Scott Melker noting that U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) drew roughly $2.4 billion last week, their strongest week since October 2025. Bitcoin.com News also tracked the run as the inflow streak stretched to seven days and $2.98 billion.
Then there is the calendar and Coinglass greeted Sunday night with a short post: “UPtober is on the way.” Binance’s monthly candles show October finishing green in six of the last eight years, including gains of 39.9% in 2021 and 28.5% in 2023. The two misses, in 2018 and 2025, were both about 3.9% losses.
The Bear Ledger
Analyst Benjamin Cowen wasn’t entirely convinced, however, and even though he conceded the aforementioned technicals were promising, there were a few gaps that persist, adding:
Bitcoin closed above the May high, which is technically a point for the bulls, and the burden of proof remains with the bears.
His problem is with the size of the move, noting that usually after passing the 50W like in 2019/2023, $BTC runs 20-30% within 1-2 weeks. However, this time he believes:
The move has been much more muted, probably because of fears over seasonality and yields heading higher. The whole move has been extremely humbling.
Those yields are tangible given that the Federal Reserve raised rates on Sept. 16 for the first time since July 2023. The 10-year Treasury closed Friday at 5.17%, near levels last seen in 2007.
Pundit Emreislek went further, stating that bitcoin “appears to have completed a bearish retest” of the $85,000 to $93,000 zone over the weekend, and unless prices climb back into it, the plan is to add hedge shorts and move “toward a market-neutral position.”
Monday Already Ran the Test
Within hours of the close, bitcoin’s price was trading near $83,000, down 1.5% on the day. It touched $82,705, a hair below the $82,850 May high that the bulls had just celebrated clearing. Cowen had written that he thought bitcoin would by now have either “accepted back below” that level or be much higher.
For anyone tempted to wait for a deeper pullback, Bitcoin.com News ran the numbers recently and found that buyers who waited for a 30% dip paid more in 61% of tested cases. An interesting few days lie ahead for the crypto market.