Benjamin Cowen Warns Bitcoin (BTC) May Retest Bull Market Support Band Below $83,000

Three 21st-of-the-Month Tops

Veteran analyst Benjamin Cowen has warned that Bitcoin (BTC) could be the next asset to retest its bull market support band, after the Nasdaq, Ethereum and several large-cap equity proxies already did. The warning came in a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on October 21, where he argued that the Bitcoin price bounced from its 50-day moving average but is losing momentum again. His calendar observation anchors the call: the 21st of July, August and September each produced a short-term top this year. August's peak was a higher high set a few days later, and September's actual top arrived on September 3. If that rhythm repeats, Cowen sees the next top forming between October 21 and November 3, the date of the US midterm elections.

The bull market support band, in his framework, is the rising floor of the cycle, tracked by the 21-week exponential moving average (EMA), and Bitcoin last tested it roughly nine weeks ago. The warning matters for the wider Bitcoin (BTC) market because everything around the flagship has already made the trip: the Nasdaq has touched its band, the S&P 500 is approaching it, and the Dow Jones sits above it after a single dip below. The Altcoin market capitalization, measured both excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum together, has tested the 21-week EMA, as has Ethereum's own market cap. Even Strategy (MSTR) has touched its band. In Cowen's reading, the fact that Bitcoin alone has not tested the band is evidence of relative strength: under a tightening environment, capital is rotating out of riskier altcoins into Bitcoin, which he expects to keep lifting Bitcoin's dominance. That rotation, he noted, is itself a sign the cycle's risk appetite is narrowing rather than broadening.

Burden of Proof Back on Bulls

Below $83,000, Cowen argued, the burden of proof moves back to the bulls. He outlined two bear-market paths that can follow a so-called top amid apathy. The first is a short and shallow drawdown that ends within about nine months, the pattern of 2019. The second is a longer bear market in which breakouts that look bullish keep failing, as in 2022 and 2015; because the market has never faced a single burst of whale-sized selling pressure large enough to clear it at once, such false breakouts tend to repeat. If Bitcoin (BTC) loses $83,000, he placed the next support in the mid-$70,000s, where the bull market support band runs, with a retest of the lower end of the range below that.

The signals are mixed. Technical analysis, in his assessment, is bullish, while the macro environment, from equities to energy prices, is bearish. Any fourth-quarter correction would therefore arrive as an equity decline dragging Bitcoin down rather than as a Bitcoin-specific problem; in midterm election years, fourth-quarter Bitcoin drops have historically stemmed from equity crashes, with the 2022 FTX collapse compounding one such episode. The 50-day moving average is his first tripwire: a daily close beneath it could set up the 21-week EMA test. Bitcoin has already closed one weekly candle below $83,000, and a second such weekly close would leave bulls having to prove the move was not a fake breakout. He also flagged a path where Bitcoin is pushed down to the band, rallies into the midterms and retests its lows afterward, with the strongest bounce more likely after a sweep of September's mid-month low. Flow data adds its own caution flag, with US spot ETFs recently logging a $636 million single-day outflow. Until a second weekly close prints, his read keeps the band retest as a possibility, not a done deal.

The Rotation Argument Behind the Call

The load-bearing piece of Cowen's call is the rotation logic rather than any single line on a chart: under tightening liquidity, speculative capital consolidates into Bitcoin, which is the Bitcoin maximalism thesis expressed as a flow, and it also explains why the altcoin complex has already paid the band a visit. What decides the next leg is whether the cohort inclined to HODL through drawdowns defends the band if it is tested, and whether price can reclaim the 50-day average first. Our Bitcoin technical analysis monitoring treats the weekly close as the checkpoint. Longer-horizon models, such as Meta AI's $1.3 million January 2027 scenario, imply a very different path; Cowen's framework warns the near-term road can be rougher than those projections assume.