Bitcoin (BTC) has closed a weekly candle below its 200-period exponential moving average (EMA) for the first time since October 2023, marking the end of a technical uptrend that persisted for 882 days. According to Cointelegraph, this shift in trend has renewed attention on Bitcoin's onchain cost-basis levels and its historical interactions with this key moving average across previous cycles, suggesting a broader recovery timeline based on past market behavior.
The 200-week EMA is a critical indicator of Bitcoin's long-term trend, historically distinguishing expansion phases from deeper corrective periods. On the weekly chart, BTC closed below the average near $67,628, ending a support streak that began in late 2023. Crypto analyst Rekt Capital highlighted this development, noting that the EMA has been lost as support and could potentially turn into resistance during any forthcoming recovery. Previous cycles indicate that reclaiming the 200-weekly EMA has required time. For instance, in 2018, Bitcoin traded below this level for approximately 14 weeks before regaining it. During the Covid-led March 2020 liquidity shock, the recovery took about eight weeks, while in 2022, BTC remained under the average for nearly 30 weeks. Across these instances, the average duration below the 200-weekly EMA was around 17 to 18 weeks.
Momentum indicators also reflect a cooling of longer-term investor participation. Last week, Bitcoin researcher Axel Adler Jr. observed that entity-adjusted liveliness peaked in December 2025 after BTC reached an all-time high near $126,000 in October. Liveliness measures the ratio of coin days destroyed to coin days created, adjusted for internal transfers. The metric has since declined below its 30-day and 90-day moving averages, while the 90-day remains above the 365-day at 0.02622. Similar rollovers in 2020 and 2022 preceded extended accumulation phases lasting one to two years. A sustained decline in the liveliness metric typically signals reduced spending activity and slower capital rotation, conditions that may prolong the time required for BTC to rebuild a position and reclaim the 200-weekly EMA.
Bitcoin's realized price, near $55,000, reflects the average onchain cost basis of all coins. The shifted realized price, near $42,000, projects this metric forward and historically highlights deeper value areas during drawdowns. With BTC trading between the 200-weekly EMA and the realized price band cluster, this region has historically acted as a long-term accumulation zone since 2015. Prior cycles show consolidation periods of six to eight months around these levels before broader upside continuation. A reclaim of the 200-weekly EMA would restore the price above a key long-term trend threshold, while failure to do so maintains focus on the $55,000 realized price and the lower shifted band near $42,000 as potential areas of liquidity concentration.
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