Bitcoin Mirrors 2022 Bear Setup Below $77K as Missouri Sues CoinFlip for $1.83M

Bitcoin News

Bitcoin slipped below $77,000 this week after a forceful rejection at the 200-day moving average, with on-chain researchers warning the structure now closely resembles the March 2022 setup that preceded the last full-cycle bear market leg. The recent rally lifted price roughly 37% from April lows before stalling near $82,400, mirroring the 43% advance that capped the 2022 cycle peak. Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, called the 200-day MA the historical boundary between relief rallies and bear-market continuation, arguing the current rejection delivers the strongest technical confirmation that the broader downtrend remains structurally intact across the coming months.

Demand-side metrics reinforce the cautious read. Speculative perpetual-futures appetite cooled sharply once spot tagged $82,000, while United States spot Bitcoin ETF flows flipped from net buyers into active net sellers across the back half of last week. Unrealized profit margins reached 17.7% on May 5, the highest reading since June 2025 and a level closely matching what was observed immediately before the March 2022 rejection. Profit-taking by short-term holders is accelerating, and miner outflows have steepened, leaving the spot bid increasingly reliant on long-term wallets that historically absorb supply only at deeply discounted price ranges.

Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway opened a civil action against Bitcoin ATM operator CoinFlip, accusing the firm of knowingly facilitating fraudulent transactions and profiting from opaque kiosk fees. The complaint seeks $1.83 million in civil penalties along with an operational ban that would bar the company from servicing kiosks across the state. Hanaway compared crypto ATMs to getaway cars for scammers targeting elderly residents, framing the suit as part of a broader push to disrupt impersonation fraud. CoinFlip rejected the action as meritless, saying it operates under licensed and regulated frameworks and urging prosecutors to focus enforcement on the underlying criminal actors.

The Missouri filing lands amid a national tightening cycle that is reshaping the cash-to-crypto exchange business. CoinFlip already faces a separate enforcement action in Iowa, and the lawsuit arrives only days after top competitor Bitcoin Depot moved into Chapter 11 bankruptcy under similar regulatory pressure. State prosecutors increasingly argue that legacy compliance programs at kiosk operators have failed to catch the scams that funnel victims into irreversible transfers. The shift signals an erosion of the permissive operating environment that defined the ATM segment, with surviving operators now facing thinner margins, slimmer geographic footprints, and a higher bar for transaction-monitoring controls.

Bitcoin financial services firm Unchained and Nashville-based hub Bitcoin Park are taking the upcoming Bitcoin Pizza Day on tour, with coordinated screenings of a new short film across ten US cities including Fort Worth, Kansas City, Chicago, Washington D.C., Portland, Nashville, Austin, Tampa Bay, and Lexington. The roadshow is anchored by a free screening kit, a discussion primer, and pizza sponsorship for the first one hundred participating meetups. The campaign marks the sixteenth anniversary of Laszlo Hanyecz's 10,000 BTC pizza purchase from May 22, 2010, a payment now worth roughly $760 million at current prices.

The roadshow centers on a short film produced in partnership with The Atlantic's brand studio that frames three core ideas: that Bitcoin is misunderstood as a generic crypto asset, that it rewards long-term thinking over speculation, and that direct self-custody is what separates ownership from exposure. Unchained Chief Commercial Officer Jonathan Sexton said adoption still happens peer-to-peer and that every holder was once introduced by a friend rather than an advertisement. The film positions Bitcoin as distinct from the broader altcoin complex, leaning on collaborative custody and wealth-preservation narratives that have hardened during the latest drawdown.

The technical structure is the cleanest bearish setup since the May rally began. The 200-day moving average near $82,400 has now rejected price twice, converting it into the dominant overhead barrier, while $77,000 marks the immediate horizontal support. A daily close back above $82,400 with rising volume would invalidate the bear-market continuation thesis and reopen the path toward the prior $89K-90K shelf. A failure of $77,000 on heavy spot selling, by contrast, projects a measured-move retest of the $72K demand zone and the April swing low. Watch ETF flows and miner outflows for the next directional signal.