Bitcoin has closed a weekly candle below its 200-week exponential moving average for the first time in the current cycle, a development that has rattled markets but one that analyst Benjamin Cowen says follows a historically familiar pattern.
This Has Happened Before
The last time Bitcoin closed a weekly candle below the 200-week EMA was June 2022, during the depths of that cycle’s bear market. Cowen argued that the current hand-wringing about the four-year cycle being broken or this time being different misses the point. The same pattern has played out repeatedly across prior cycles, and overcomplicating it does not serve investors well.
“Often times Bitcoin drops into June,” Cowen said, pointing to identical June lows in both 2022 and 2018 as reference points. The current June low fits that same seasonal template.
The 2026 and 2018 Parallel Is Striking
Cowen drew a specific structural comparison between 2018 and 2026 that is difficult to ignore. In 2018, Bitcoin put in a low in February, a higher low in late March to early April, and then a lower low in June. In 2026, the exact same sequence played out: a low in February, a higher low in late March to early April, and now a lower low in June.
In 2018 following the June low, Bitcoin saw a brief push higher into early July before selling off again in mid-July back to $6,000. Cowen raised the question of whether the $60,000 level in 2026 is the structural equivalent of that $6,000 level in 2018 and 2019, a line whose sustained breach would signal the market cycle bottom is approaching.
Time-Based vs Price-Based Capitulation
Cowen drew a distinction between two ways this bear market could end, and said investors need to understand both.
The first is time-based capitulation, which he considers the base case. Under this scenario, Bitcoin forms a low early in the summer, stages a counter-trend rally in mid to late summer, and then drops into a final market cycle bottom in the third quarter or early fourth quarter of 2026. This is consistent with how midterm year bear markets have historically resolved.
The second is price-based capitulation, where a sudden catalyst triggers a massive spike in volume, wipes out leveraged positions, fully resets on-chain metrics, and forces the cycle to end earlier than the calendar would suggest. The pandemic crash of March 2020 is the clearest example of this, where an external shock caused exactly that kind of reset and allowed the subsequent bull market to begin.
Cowen added that all three prior bear market bottoms, in 2014, 2018, and 2022, were accompanied by a massive volume spike that has simply not appeared yet in this cycle.
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