Will Bitcoin Go Back Up? Three Scenarios to Year-End: $70,000, $80,000 or $100,000

Will bitcoin go back up? Bitcoin trades at about $75,700 on Saturday evening, November 7, 2026 (CoinGecko, 5:30 p.m. ET). That is 2.2% below October's close and 40% below the record of $126,080 set in October 2025. Whether the price recovers by year-end comes down to three levels and a short list of dates: if bitcoin holds the $75,700 cost basis of recent buyers, the road back to $80,000 to $90,000 is open. If it closes below the 200-day moving average at $73,191, $70,000 comes into play. A return to $100,000 by December 31 would take a 32% gain in 53 days, something bitcoin managed in roughly one in five such periods since 2020.

This is the weekend check-in for anyone asking what happened since November 1, which scenarios are realistic into year-end and what you can actually do now. The individual reasons behind the sell-off are tracked in our running explainer Why is crypto down today?

• Price: $75,700, down 2.2% since the end of October and 13.5% year to date.
• November range: high of $81,105 on November 4, low of $74,762 on November 6 (Bitstamp).
• Spot bitcoin ETFs: $1.28 billion in net outflows in the week to November 6, the biggest weekly total since late June.
• Rates: 76.8% odds of a Fed rate hike on December 9 (CME FedWatch, November 6).
• Sentiment: the Fear and Greed Index stands at 25, extreme fear.
• Next test: October CPI on Tuesday, November 10, at 8:30 a.m. ET.

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Bitcoin price since November 1: above $81,000, then below $75,000

November opened quietly. Bitcoin closed October at $77,430 and November 1 at $78,233, then investors pulled just over half a billion dollars from the US spot ETFs in two days. The jump came after the midterm elections on November 3: on Wednesday morning, shortly after Wall Street opened, bitcoin climbed to $81,105. The rally lasted one day.

On Thursday, November 5, the mood flipped. Wallets tied to Trump Media sent 4,259 bitcoin to Crypto.com, weeks before holders of its convertible notes can demand up to $1 billion in cash on November 30. A sale has not been confirmed; the details are in our report on Trump Media's 4,259 BTC. The same day, President Trump said a big agreement on Ukraine and all of Europe is coming after meeting Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev; he gave no details, Al Jazeera reports. The Nasdaq Composite lost 5.5%, and bitcoin slid from $80,300 to $75,500 between 7 and 11 a.m. ET. How markets read the Russia headline is covered in Trump, Russia and bitcoin.

Friday brought the jobs report. The US economy added 165,000 jobs in October, unemployment stood at 4.1%, and the two prior months were revised up by a combined 84,000 (Bureau of Labor Statistics). A labor market that strong takes away the Fed's reason to cut. Bitcoin dropped to $74,762, its low for the month.

Daily closes from Bitstamp (UTC). Nasdaq Composite per Nasdaq: 25,736.51 on November 4, 24,315.00 on November 5.

Why did bitcoin fall? ETF outflows, rate-hike fears and the Binance hack

Three forces are pushing on the price at once, and none of them has run its course. Together they explain the selling pressure of the past week.

First, money is leaving the spot bitcoin ETFs. From Monday to Friday, a net $1.28 billion flowed out, with only Wednesday bringing in $74.6 million. On Friday alone, BlackRock's IBIT, the largest fund, lost $403 million (Crypto Briefing, citing SoSoValue data). That puts 2026 net flows for the US spot ETFs at minus $914 million, according to SoSoValue data compiled by The Block (analysis at MLQ). The ETFs were the engine of institutional adoption and the market's biggest buyer in 2024 and 2025. While they sell, the demand that carries a rally is missing.

Second, the market is pricing in higher rates. The Fed held its target range at 3.75% to 4.00% on October 28, and two of twelve voters already wanted a hike (Federal Reserve). After the jobs report, CME FedWatch put the odds of a hike on December 9 at 76.8%, up from 66.9% a week earlier (24/7 Wall St.). Higher interest rates make Treasury bills more attractive and pull money out of bitcoin, tech equities and other risk assets. Bitcoin has tended to do best when rates fall and global liquidity grows; for December, markets have priced out rate cuts and price in a hike instead.

Third, the Binance hack still weighs. Attackers stole crypto worth about $6.3 billion from the largest exchange on October 29, part of which has been frozen (CNBC). Customers withdrew billions afterward, and trust across the crypto market took a hit. What the hack has cost Binance so far is in our Binance hack one week later review.

Market sentiment shows it. The Fear and Greed Index, a gauge of investor sentiment, fell from 50 on November 5 to 25 on Saturday (alternative.me). What happened after past bouts of extreme fear is laid out in our piece on the Fear and Greed Index at extreme fear.

Will bitcoin go back up? The moving averages and cost bases that decide it

Whether bitcoin goes back up can be read from what investors paid. Two tools help: on-chain data, which shows the average entry price of different groups of holders, and classic technical analysis with moving averages. Holders sitting on a profit tend to hold; holders sitting on a loss often sell the first time the price returns to their entry. Right now five levels stand out, three below the price and two above.

• $75,700, short-term holder cost basis: the average price paid by investors who have held their coins for less than 155 days (Glassnode, November 4). Bitcoin sits right on it. A sustained move below puts these buyers underwater, and in fearful markets they tend to sell.
• $73,191, 200-day moving average: the average of the last 200 daily closes and, for many funds, the line between an uptrend and a downtrend. Bitcoin is 3.4% above it.
• $67,467, 200-week moving average: the level where past bear markets often found their floor. Bitcoin is 12.2% above it.
• $77,700, active investors' mean: Glassnode calls it the True Market Mean. Above it, the market is considered healthy.
• About $81,300, spot ETF buyers' cost basis: Coinbase Institutional's late-October estimate of the average entry price of US spot ETF investors (Investinglive). ETF holders are down about 7% on average.

Far below sits the realized price, the average price of all bitcoin at the time each coin last moved, at $53,995 (BGeometrics, October 31). It plays no role in the year-end scenarios, but it shows how much profit is still in the market as a whole. Long-term targets through 2030 and the method behind them are in our Bitcoin price prediction.

Scenario 1: bitcoin falls to $70,000 and the crypto winter deepens

The bearish path starts with a daily close below the 200-day moving average at $73,191. Recent buyers would then be at a loss, and the next round number is $70,000, 7.5% below today's price. Beneath that, the 200-week moving average at $67,467 is the last major support before the summer lows, when bitcoin closed at $58,526 at the end of June.

The likely triggers:

• October CPI on November 10 comes in hot and turns a December hike into a near certainty.
• ETF outflows continue; a second week with more than $1 billion leaving would be a warning sign.
• On November 11, index provider MSCI publishes the list of companies caught by its new rule for firms without sufficient operating business, and Strategy is on it. Index funds would have to sell shares, and the company would have less room for new bitcoin purchases.
• Trump Media sells part of its roughly 14,139 bitcoin before November 30 to pay the notes.

The options market shows where traders are hedging: for the November 27 expiry, the largest put positions sit at $58,000 (4,065 BTC) and $75,000 (3,174 BTC); for the year-end expiry, at $60,000 (6,667 BTC), according to Deribit data from Saturday evening. How long bear markets in bitcoin and stocks have lasted is covered in our guide to the bear market.

Scenario 2: bitcoin recovers to $80,000 to $90,000

Getting back to $80,000 takes a 5.7% gain, $90,000 takes 18.9%. Step one would be reclaiming $77,700, step two a daily close above roughly $81,300. From there, ETF investors would be back in profit on average, and the urge to sell at break-even would fade.

The options market leans this way. For the November 27 expiry, with 71,921 BTC in open interest worth about $5.4 billion, max pain sits at $80,000. That is the price at which option buyers collect the least in total and option sellers earn the most. The biggest call strike is $90,000 (4,533 BTC). A soft CPI print on November 10, less hawkish Fed minutes on November 18 and an end to ETF outflows would support this scenario. The ceiling is the high of recent months: bitcoin closed at $86,587 on September 21.

Scenario 3: bitcoin at $100,000 by New Year's Eve, still below its all-time high

$100,000 is 32.1% above today's price and would still leave bitcoin about 21% below its all-time high of $126,080. That is not impossible in 53 days, but several things would have to break bitcoin's way at once:

• The Fed backs off: the odds of a hike would need to drop well below 50% from 76.8%, for example after soft inflation readings on November 10 and November 25.
• The ETFs buy again: a move of this size would need several billion dollars of inflows over weeks, not a few good days.
• Relief for corporate buyers: MSCI keeps Strategy in its indexes, and Trump Media pays its notes without selling bitcoin.
• Geopolitics: a signed agreement on Ukraine would lift risk assets broadly.

For the December 25 expiry, 6,737 BTC of calls sit at $100,000 and 5,821 BTC at $120,000. Traders see the scenario as possible, yet max pain for that expiry is $75,000, right where bitcoin trades today.

How often bitcoin moved this far in 53 days: past performance since 2020

From Sunday, there are 53 days left until New Year's Eve. We looked at every window of that length since 2020, 2,449 in total, and measured how far bitcoin moved from the first daily close to the last. We then applied those percentage moves to today's price of $75,700.

Based on Bitstamp daily closes: 2,449 windows since 2020 and 4,275 since 2015. A bear phase counts every start day on which bitcoin was at least 30% below its prior high (2,749 windows). The windows overlap, so the shares are historical frequencies, not probabilities for this year.

The main takeaway is how wide bitcoin's range is. Only in about a quarter of cases did the price stay within -7.5% and +5.7%. In 46% of windows it rose more than 5.7%, in 30% it fell more than 7.5%. Bear phases, including the crypto winters of 2018 and 2022, look much like the average: the distance from the record alone says little about where the next few weeks will go. Past performance shows bitcoin's volatility; it does not predict this year's outcome.

Short-term catalysts: key dates that can move the bitcoin price

The next eight weeks are packed. Each scenario above has a date on which it gets confirmed or ruled out.

Sources for the dates: the Bureau of Economic Analysis release schedule, the FOMC calendar and MSCI's index review dates. Under Fed practice, the minutes come out three weeks after the meeting.

Should I buy bitcoin now? What you can do this week

Nobody reliably buys the exact bottom, and in today's crypto market the swings are large. If you plan to buy bitcoin for the long run anyway, a fixed schedule usually works better than waiting for the low. Whether now is a good time to buy bitcoin is a question a plan answers better than a gut feeling. Three things help.

Dollar-cost averaging beats timing

A simple example using Bitstamp daily closes: putting $100 into bitcoin on the first of every month in 2026 means $1,100 invested, now worth about $1,144, a 4.0% gain at an average price of $72,815. Buying it all on January 1 at $88,728 would leave you down 14.7%. The gap is even starker from the record: a lump sum on October 6, 2025, at the record close of $124,728 is down 39.3% today, while a monthly plan started that day is down only about 2.5%. Which platforms offer recurring bitcoin buys is shown in our comparison buy bitcoin with a savings plan.

Buy in tranches and set a loss limit

If you want to put a larger amount to work, split it into three or four parts and buy on fixed days, for example after the key dates above. That way not everything lands on a single price. Just as important is the downside: decide before you buy how large a loss you will accept, and only invest money you will not need for years. Any purchase should fit your investment objectives, risk tolerance and financial situation. In the 2018 and 2022 bear markets, bitcoin lost more than 75% from its peak. Where you can buy safely and at low cost is compared in our crypto exchange comparison.

Taxes: holding period and losses

In the US, the IRS treats bitcoin and other digital assets as property. Coins held for more than a year qualify for long-term capital gains rates of 0%, 15% or 20%, while gains on coins held a year or less are taxed as ordinary income. Selling at a loss can offset capital gains, and up to $3,000 of net losses a year can be deducted from ordinary income. This section is not tax advice; check your situation with a tax professional.

Bitcoin remains a highly volatile asset. This article is not investment advice; the scenarios show what matters into year-end, not where the price will land.