Benjamin Cowen Says a Second Bitcoin (BTC) Weekly Close Below $83,000 Confirms Fake Breakout

Cowen Flags a Fragile Bitcoin Setup

Veteran trader Benjamin Cowen warned on Sunday that the Bitcoin (BTC) price has moved onto a knife's edge, with a crash scenario turning live once the Federal Reserve meets next week. In a video uploaded to his YouTube channel on October 25, Cowen diagnosed a split market: the MACD, the relative strength index and a golden cross all read bullish, yet the macro environment is flowing the opposite way. A golden cross, the chart pattern in which a shorter moving average crosses above a longer one, is traditionally read as a bullish signal, and he conceded the technicals currently favor the bulls. The equities correction he called for earlier this year, a decline of 10 to 20%, is already under way in his view. The Russell 2000 has fallen 11.5%, the Nasdaq and the Dow about 8% each, leaving only the S&P 500, down roughly 3%, short of the full move. South Korea's market has slid about 26% since late September. The three main US indexes have all touched their bull market support bands, and the altcoin market caps have just brushed the same band, while Bitcoin (BTC) is the last major asset yet to reach its own. Macro strength backs his read: the dollar is printing higher highs and higher lows, the XLE energy ETF has set a record high, and crude trades near $105 a barrel for WTI and $117–$118 for Brent. The warning lights are already lit in his reading of the daily chart. Bitcoin closed its daily candle beneath the 50-day moving average, and Cowen said the bearish case gains force if that line hardens into resistance within days. A fast reclaim would resemble August, when price snapped back above the average quickly, and Bitcoin must not spend more than a week below it, he added.

The $83,000 Weekly Close Line

The scenario turns on the weekly candle. Bitcoin has already printed one weekly close below $83,000, and Cowen argued that a second such close would effectively confirm a fake breakout. The calendar carries its own tell: rallies in this midterm year topped out on July 21, August 21, September 21 and October 21, with August the lone exception, stretching its top to September 3. Mapped onto this cycle, that extension lands on November 3, midterm election day. From there his script runs. The Federal Reserve holds rates on October 28, the personal consumption expenditures price index comes in hotter than expected on October 29, and long-term yields climb, with the 10-year Treasury yield reaching around 5.3% and shaking risk assets. He sees the 2026 path in long yields echoing 2018, when yields bottomed in late October and rebounded around the midterms, pulling the AI-sensitive S&P 500 into a year-end correction that dragged Bitcoin (BTC) with it and set a fourth-quarter low after long yields peaked in mid-November. A weekly close above the May high of $83,000 would void the entire setup. Cowen pushed back on the argument that it is too late in a midterm year for another drop, countering that fake breakouts do not unwind slowly: in 2015, the bottom arrived three weeks after the second weekly close below the baseline, and in 2020 the crash came the week after the second weekly exit. Objections that Bitcoin just set a record high and trades above the 50-week moving average cut little with him, since the same was true in 2015 and 2022 and prices still fell. He closed with a discipline note: investors who split their buys across the second half of a midterm year and hold have historically done well, and as he put it, “everyone has a plan until Bitcoin falls 5%.” When talk turns to how well Bitcoin is holding up, he said, seven out of ten times a decline followed.

Our reading is that the call stands or falls on one printed line, the weekly close, and its author has named the condition that would kill it, a finish above $83,000. Broader Bitcoin market coverage has carried a similar bearish tilt: Peter Schiff's $75,000 warning followed the break below $80,000, a bottom at $74,000–$75,000 before a rally is Ted Pillows' base case, and Cryptoquant CEO Ki Young Ju argues fund flows echo past bull cycles. For readers tracking levels independently, our Bitcoin technical analysis page carries the live support and resistance map. Until a weekly candle prints above $83,000, the scenario rests in Cowen's name, with the 50-day moving average and the early-November calendar as his own checkpoints.