Bitcoin's recovery from its dip below $81,000 late last week started positively but appears to have stalled over the past 24 hours. Questions are now being raised about whether the cryptocurrency has truly bottomed out or if further declines are imminent.
Market Sentiment and Historical Patterns
A Santiment analyst noted on Wednesday that social media sentiment has turned significantly bearish, with an increase in declarations of a bear market. However, historical patterns suggest that major market turnarounds often occur when retail investor hope is depleted, with the market moving contrary to crowd expectations.
Furthermore, Bitcoin's 30-day and 365-day MVRV ratios, which assess unrealized profit and loss, remain in negative territory, indicating that traders are currently holding losses.
Continued Whale Selling Pressure
Derivatives speculators are also beginning to short positions again, anticipating further BTC price drops, although not at the volumes observed in mid-October. Several factors also warrant caution against definitively calling a market bottom, including a decline in network activity and the number of active addresses.
More critically, whale wallets holding between 10 and 10,000 BTC have been reducing their holdings for six consecutive weeks, following a period of accumulation through early October, according to the analyst. These findings have been corroborated by CryptoQuant.
The analyst expressed skepticism about a sustained recovery to six-figure levels while whales continue to offload their Bitcoin holdings, but predicted a short-term bounce.
“Overall, data points to the most likely scenario being a short-term bounce. A rebound above $90K again soon wouldn’t be a major surprise at all.”
📊 Bitcoin’s depressing slump to $80K has been followed by an (at least slightly) encouraging bounce back up to $88K. Now, questions are arising about whether last week’s bottom was the best buy opportunity we’ll get. We explore in our latest deep dive. 👇 https://t.co/4Hja2WY15J pic.twitter.com/D29wrva0Ie
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) November 26, 2025
Technical Indicators and Bearish Scenarios
Crypto analyst ‘Brett’ observed that Bitcoin has historically never achieved a new all-time high after closing below the 50-week moving average without first touching the 200-week moving average.
“The 50-week has been crossed, the 100-week is currently acting as support. If we break that level, the 200-week is next up.”
This technical outlook suggests a potentially bearish scenario, as the 200-week simple moving average is currently situated at $56,000, according to TradingView data.
Sluggish Recovery and Leverage Flush
Bitcoin experienced a bounce to $89,000, but analysts from Swissblock noted that "momentum still hasn’t ignited."
“It remains deeply negative, at levels typical of late-stage capitulation. Until momentum turns, every bounce is just a tactical reaction.”
Meanwhile, analyst James Check identified potential for further leverage to be flushed out, cautioning that BTC could see a price wick down into the $70,000 to $80,000 zone "to flush the final leverage pockets."
At the time of writing, BTC has been trading sideways for the past day, failing to surpass the $88,000 mark and hovering around $87,500.