Bitcoin has broken out of the descending channel that capped every rally since October 2025. The 200-week moving average held as the cycle floor through two months of summer chop. Price is te
Bitcoin price analysis on the weekly chart puts BTC at its first real test since the August breakout. The coin trades at $84,055 on Saturday, almost exactly on the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement of its 2025-2026 decline at $83,848. The mid-August rally carried BTC out of a ten-month descending channel and away from the 200-week simple moving average, the line that held as the bear market’s floor. This week it reached $87,378, above the May 2026 lower high, for the first weekly higher high since the $125,668 peak of October 2025. Sunday’s close will show whether the move extends toward $92,000 or turns back to retest support.
BTC topped at $125,668 in October 2025 and spent the next ten months inside a descending channel. Every bounce reversed at its upper boundary, including the May 2026 push to about $81,000. The decline bottomed near $57,997, a drawdown of roughly 54%.
BTC/USD weekly chart with Fibonacci levels. Source: TradingView, Alexander Stefanov
The breakout did not come from deep below the 200-week SMA. From June to early August, price chopped directly on the average, wicking under it several times and reclaiming it each time. That line now sits near $65,844 and is still rising, a sign the multi-year trend beneath the bear market never broke.
Mid-August ended the chop. One weekly candle added about 20%, lifting price from roughly $63,000 to $78,000 and clearing the 200-week SMA and the channel’s upper line in a single move. A long base on the 200-week average followed by a high-momentum breakout is the sequence technical analysts look for in a macro bottom attempt. This week’s high of $87,378 on Binance then took out the May lower high. A confirmed reversal needs more than one higher high, but BTC has now broken the bearish sequence for the first time since the top.
Fibonacci retracements measure how much of a drop price has recovered. The 0.382 level at $83,848 marks a recovery of 38.2% of the entire decline, and it is often where relief rallies first run into real selling.
This week’s candle opened at $81,162, pushed to $87,378 and slid back to about $83,813. The long upper wick shows sellers drove price down from the highs. The candle closes at 00:00 UTC on Monday, and a finish above $83,848 opens the path to $91,833, while a close below points to a retest of the $78,161 to $73,968 area.
The $91,833 level, the 0.5 retracement, overlaps the December 2025 to January 2026 trading range, where many buyers are still underwater and may sell at breakeven. Above it, the golden pocket stretches to $99,818, a zone where bear-market relief rallies have often peaked. A hold above $100,000 would put BTC in a new uptrend on the weekly structure.
The 50-week SMA at $78,161 capped the May rally, and BTC now trades above it for the first time since late 2025. Its slope still points down because the expensive weeks of late 2025 remain inside its one-year window. As they roll out, the average should flatten on its own, and several weekly closes above it would confirm the medium-term trend has turned. The 50-week also sits well above the 200-week, so no bearish crossover is forming.
Weekly RSI reads about 61, above its average near 47. Buyers have controlled the past 14 weeks without pushing the market into the overheated zone above 70. The reading fell below 30 in early 2026 and built higher lows through the summer. A new price high in the golden pocket paired with a lower RSI high would be the first warning that momentum is fading.
On-chain data explains why the 200-week SMA held so firmly. According to analyst Axel Adler Jr, the average purchase price of long-term holders, meaning coins held six months or longer, stood at $62,706 on September 23, only about $3,100 below the 200-week SMA. In early August that cohort nearly slipped into a loss, and holders sitting at breakeven after a 54% drop had little reason to sell into the chop.
In August, Bitcoin's long-term holders came close to slipping into the red. Now bitcoin sits 37% above their average purchase price.
In under three months price is up 46%, and the deepest correction along the way was just 6%. Will pullbacks stay this shallow as the rally… pic.twitter.com/l2N6npPJYu
— Axel
Adler Jr (@AxelAdlerJr) September 23, 2026
Their buffer has grown fast. Adler puts it at 20% on September 15 and 37% on September 23, with the cost basis almost unchanged, so price did all the work. His open question is whether pullbacks stay as tight as they did in 2015-2018 or widen the way they did in 2018-2022.
CryptoQuant data published on September 24 splits 30-day demand growth between spot markets and perpetual futures. Futures demand turned positive through August and September, while spot demand stayed negative, though it is climbing off its low.
Bitcoin demand remains negative, but it is recovering from the bottom.
“The trend is shifting toward the positive. If the current momentum persists, spot demand will also flip to positive.” – By @CW8900pic.twitter.com/KOYPFpxKKw
— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) September 24, 2026
That forecast depends on momentum holding, and the data has not flipped yet. Until that happens the rally leans on leverage, and forced liquidations could make a rejection at $83,848 sharper than spot selling alone would.
The flows around the breakout fit that picture. Spot Bitcoin ETFs took in $433 million on September 18, according to Farside Investors, and more than $648 million in short positions were liquidated as BTC pushed through $85,000 on September 21. Forced short covering can lift price quickly without new spot buyers stepping in, which is why the CryptoQuant spot reading matters more than the headline move.
From the October 2025 top to this week’s test October 2025 BTC sets its all-time high at $125,668 and enters a descending channel. May 2026 A rally to about $81,000 fails at the channel’s upper line. June to early August 2026 Price bottoms near $57,997 and chops on the 200-week SMA. Early August 2026 Long-term holders come close to breakeven. Mid-August 2026 A weekly candle of about +20% breaks the channel. September 22-23 BTC tops the May high and the holder profit buffer reaches 37%. September 26 BTC trades on the 0.382 Fibonacci level ahead of the weekly close.A rejection at the 0.382 would leave the setup standing if buyers defend $73,968 to $78,161, where the 0.236 retracement and the 50-week SMA overlap, since that would form a higher low above the summer base. Losing $73,968 on a weekly close would put the breakout in doubt, and a fall under the 200-week SMA near $65,844 would invalidate it. Thin weekend trading adds risk to the close, with CoinMarketCap showing $14.82 billion in 24-hour volume against a $1.68 trillion market cap.
The on-chain floor will shift in the coming months as well. Coins bought during the summer base, between roughly $58,000 and $66,000, start crossing the six-month threshold around December, which should keep the long-term holder cost basis close to the 200-week SMA. The first 30-day window with positive spot demand in CryptoQuant’s data would show the breakout has buyers beyond the derivatives market.
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