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1. Galaxy Research Says the Bitcoin Bear Market Is Over
Galaxy Research, the research arm of Galaxy Digital, declared in a report published on Monday, October 26, that the Bitcoin (BTC) bear market ended in June and that the asset has since moved into an accumulation phase. Alex Thorn, the firm's head of firmwide research, called the present moment an attractive time to buy and hold bitcoin, citing a reclaimed 50-week moving average, easing selling pressure and a stronger case for the cryptocurrency as a hedge against currency debasement.
The call arrives at an awkward moment for price. Bitcoin was trading close to $80,000 around the time of the report, roughly 36% below the record it set in October 2025 and about 39% above the cycle low of June 30. On Sunday it briefly dipped to around $79,700. Thorn's argument is therefore not that the price is rising sharply, but that the structure underneath it has changed.
For readers new to the subject, the debate matters because bitcoin's four-year rhythm of boom and bust has shaped how funds, miners and corporate treasuries plan their purchases. If the low is indeed in, institutions that have waited on the sidelines may regard the current range as an entry zone; if it is not, the next leg down could test the patience of the newer holders who arrived through exchange-traded products.
Galaxy and Thorn both disclose that they hold bitcoin, a conflict that readers should keep in mind when weighing a bullish conclusion. The report is informational and is not financial advice.
2. Why Does Galaxy Say the Bear Market Ended in June?
The short answer is that several indicators that normally mark the end of a downturn lined up after the June 30 low. Thorn points to the price recovering a long-term trend line, to a historically shallow drawdown, to an on-chain valuation measure that never reached the depths of earlier cycles, and to a slowdown in coins being sold by long-term holders.
None of these signals is a guarantee, and Thorn does not present them as one. Taken together, though, they describe a market in which sellers have been steadily running out of supply while a different group of buyers has taken over. The sections below walk through each piece of evidence in the order the report presents it.
A bear market, in common usage, is a prolonged decline of at least 20% from a peak, and in bitcoin's history the term has usually described a drawdown that lasts many months and ends only after speculative excess has been washed out. By Galaxy's reading, that washing-out process finished earlier this year, even though the price has not since challenged its all-time high.
3. The 50-Week Moving Average Has Been Reclaimed
The most visible piece of the technical case is the 50-week moving average, a widely watched line that smooths out roughly a year of weekly closing prices. Bitcoin spent 44 weeks trading below it before climbing back above it in September. The week ending October 18 marked the fifth consecutive weekly close above the line.
Thorn notes that this has happened before. Since 2011, Bitcoin has reclaimed its 50-week average on four occasions after spending at least 20 weeks beneath it. In each of those instances, the price never closed more than 8.4% below the level at which it reclaimed the average at any point over the following year, and it eventually went on to regain its previous all-time high.
A sample of four episodes is small, and past behavior does not bind future prices. Even so, the pattern gives traders a concrete reference point: the report treats a sustained position above the line as a sign that a market has stabilized rather than merely bounced.
4. How the Halving Cycle Fits the Timeline
Bitcoin's block reward is cut in half roughly every four years in an event known as the halving, which reduces the amount of new supply miners can sell. Market participants have long organized their expectations around this cycle, because previous peaks and troughs have arrived at fairly consistent distances from each halving.
According to Galaxy's figures, the previous three cycles bottomed between 777 and 912 days after a halving. At the time of the report, the market was on day 916, which places the June low just outside that historical window and suggests the bottoming process is now behind rather than ahead.
The depth of this decline also stands out. The drawdown from peak to trough was 53%, the shallowest on record. Earlier cycles saw declines of between 77% and 93%. A milder fall suggests that fewer leveraged or forced sellers were left to be flushed out, and that larger, longer-horizon holders now own a bigger share of the supply.
5. What Do On-Chain Valuation Metrics Show?
Realized value is an on-chain measure that values each coin at the price when it last moved, producing an estimate of the aggregate cost basis of all holders. When market value falls below realized value, the average holder is sitting on a loss, which historically has coincided with capitulation and cycle bottoms.
Galaxy reports that in this cycle, for the first time in any bear market, bitcoin's market value never dropped below its realized value. The ratio between the two bottomed at 1.10. In earlier cycles the ratio fell to 0.56, 0.69 and 0.75 at its lows.
Thorn reads this as evidence that demand stayed strong enough to keep the average holder in profit even at the worst of the decline. It is also a sign of how much the investor base has changed, with spot exchange-traded funds and corporate treasuries holding coins that previous generations of buyers would have traded more actively.
6. Who Is Buying, and How Much Profit Do They Hold?
The rebound from the low of $58,525 was driven largely by short-term holders, the cohort that has owned its coins for a relatively brief period. Their average cost is $74,811, which leaves them about 9% in profit at current prices. That cushion is thin, so a deeper pullback could push them underwater, but it also means most of them have not been forced out.
Another gauge, the spent-output profit ratio, stands at 1.009. A reading just above 1 indicates that coins being moved are, on average, being sold at a very small gain. The report interprets that as a sign that few investors are rushing to lock in profits, which fits the picture of a market in accumulation rather than distribution.
7. Selling Pressure Has Faded
Long-dormant coins are a useful barometer of conviction, because they belong to early investors who tend to sell only into strength. Coins that had been dormant for five years or more have been spent at a pace of about 34,000 BTC per month this year, which is half the rate seen in 2024.
Exchange-traded demand has moved the other way. U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds have added 87,000 BTC since the June low. Over the full drawdown, fund holdings fell by only 11 percent from peak to trough while the price dropped 53 percent, which indicates that fund investors were far less eager to exit than the price decline alone would suggest.
The picture is not uniformly smooth. Flows into the funds have been choppy in recent days: a streak of three days of inflows totalling about $1 billion gave way to two sessions of heavy outflows this week, leaving October flows in negative territory overall.
8. The Debasement Argument and the Macro Backdrop
Beyond charts and on-chain data, Thorn leans on a macro thesis. Federal debt has reached $40.44 trillion, and fiscal 2026 closed with a deficit of $1.99 trillion. Galaxy argues that persistent deficits of that scale support the idea that fiat currencies lose purchasing power over time, which is the core of the debasement case for scarce assets such as bitcoin.
Interest rates complicate the story. The 10-year Treasury yield reached 5.31% this month, its highest level since 2007. A government bond that pays around 5% with almost no risk makes it harder to justify holding an asset that yields nothing, and higher rates also raise borrowing costs and tend to strengthen the dollar.
Last week's hotter-than-expected inflation data revived expectations of another Federal Reserve rate hike, and bitcoin briefly slipped below $80,000 in response. Equities have not shown the same strain: the S&P 500 sits less than 1% below a record high, while bitcoin would need to gain 53% to recover its own peak.
Thorn frames this gap as an argument rather than a warning. In his view, betting against stocks and hard assets amounts to betting on fiat currency, which he describes as the one position that makes no sense today.
9. What Would Prove the Call Wrong?
Thorn is explicit about the level that would undermine his view. A weekly close below the 50-week average, which currently stands at $76,540, that is not recovered within a month would, in his words, be a warning sign that the bear market has not truly ended. That threshold sits only a few thousand dollars under the recent price, so the test could come soon.
On the upside, Thorn says bitcoin has already shown it can trade at $125,000 or higher and sees no reason it cannot return there. Reaching that level would require a gain of more than 50% from current prices.
Markets will get plenty of data to chew on in the meantime. The Federal Reserve's next policy decision is due on Wednesday, and the path of Treasury yields and ETF flows will shape whether the accumulation case holds or is tested in the days ahead. Investors weighing the call should treat it as one firm's reading, made by an analyst who owns the asset, rather than as a forecast.