Bitcoin opened the U.S. trading session on February 4th near $75,980, but the mood remains cautious after four straight months of losses. The sell-off that started in November knocked price below the 50-week moving average first, then the 100-week line more recently. Now all eyes are on the next major support—the 200-week exponential moving average, sitting around $68,400. This moving average has acted as a reliable floor during past corrections, and traders are watching closely to see if it holds once again.
Where Price Could Go From Here
Coin Bureau’s Nic Puckrin sees three potential landing zones if the selling continues. The first is around $74,400, where Bitcoin found support back in April. The second is the psychological $70,000 level, hovering just above the old all-time high of $69,000. If things get really ugly, he expects a deeper drop into the $55,700 to $58,200 range, which lines up with the average price paid by long-term holders and the 200-week simple moving average.
Trader Altcoin Sherpa agrees that a test of the 200-week EMA around $68,000 makes sense from a technical standpoint. BitBull adds that historically, every time Bitcoin has lost the 100-week moving average, it’s eventually dropped down to touch the 200-week line before recovering.
For now, buyers are stepping in around the mid-$70,000s, preventing any major breakdown. The worst dips have only reached about $74,600 before bouncing back. There’s a cluster of stop-loss orders sitting just below $74,400, and if those get triggered, it could set off a quick cascade lower. Until then, it’s a tug-of-war between short sellers looking for momentum and long-term investors trying to buy the dip without getting caught in a bigger downturn.
ETF Outflows Signal Caution, Not Panic
The eleven U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have seen two weeks of consecutive outflows, losing roughly $2.8 billion combined. Last week saw $1.49 billion leave, and the week before that another $1.32 billion. Even with these redemptions, the ETFs still hold about $100 billion in assets—down from a peak of $125 billion in mid-January, but nowhere near collapse territory.
Most of the selling appears to be coming from hedge funds that bought in early to front-run the ETF launch and are now taking profits or moving into safer assets like cash and short-term Treasury bonds. The Federal Reserve’s recent pushback on rate cuts has made short-duration bonds more attractive, pulling some capital away from risk assets like Bitcoin.
A closer look at the flows shows that while some investors are pulling out of higher-fee ETFs, others are moving into lower-cost options. This suggests people are optimizing their positions rather than abandoning Bitcoin altogether. At the same time, the futures market has cooled off, with the CME basis—a measure of futures premiums—dropping to single digits. This indicates that leveraged traders are unwinding carry trades rather than piling on new short positions.
Why the 200-Week Moving Average Matters So Much
The 200-week exponential moving average distills four years of market behavior into a single number that updates every week. For institutional investors with long-term mandates, this level often serves as a make-or-break line for risk management. When Bitcoin trades above it—as it does now, with spot at $75,000 and the band at $68,400—the strategy shifts. Instead of buying every dip, traders start selling into rallies. Volatility sellers pull back, and macro hedge funds lock in gains to preserve capital in case the key support fails.
If Bitcoin does test the 200-week EMA, history suggests two paths forward. A quick bounce that reclaims the 100-week moving average within a few sessions typically brings back trend-followers and restores confidence in the futures market. But if the level breaks cleanly, Bitcoin could tumble into that deeper $55,000 to $58,000 zone that Puckrin flagged. That would force miners, corporate holders, and leveraged funds to recalculate their breakeven points and risk exposures.
Options traders are pricing in downside risk, but not to the point of panic. The market still seems to think a technical flush is more likely than a prolonged bear market. That makes this week’s close critical. Hold the 200-week band and the four-month slide might finally end. Lose it, and we could be looking at the kind of long, slow grind that defined 2022—where only patience and fresh capital made any sense.
