Galaxy Research Says Bitcoin’s Bear Market Ended in June as On-Chain Floor Holds and 50-Week Trend Flips

Bitcoin’s latest swoon never delivered the one thing that has historically defined capitulation: a break below realized value. That on-chain floor held all cycle—an anomaly—and it’s the linchpin of Galaxy Research’s view that the bear phase ended in June and the market has shifted into accumulation.

In a Monday report, Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, contends the setup now favors buyers who can hold through volatility. The price backdrop is muddled near term—Bitcoin traded around $80,000 on Thursday, roughly 36% below its October 2025 peak and 39% above the June 30 low, with a brief dip to about $79,700 on Sunday per CoinGecko. Around publication time, CoinGecko showed $80,415, a 24-hour range of $79,332–$80,825, and $1.1 billion in volume. But the structural signals he highlights are cleaner.

Trend first: after spending 44 weeks under its 50-week moving average, Bitcoin reclaimed it in September and has now posted five consecutive weekly closes above it as of the week ended October 18. Since 2011, there have been four prior instances where BTC recaptured the 50-week after 20+ weeks below; in the following 12 months of each, spot never closed more than 8.4% under the reclaim level and ultimately revisited the prior all-time high. The cycle clock rhymes as well: previous troughs arrived 777–912 days after a halving; Thursday marked day 916. Notably, this drawdown has been the mildest on record at 53%, versus 77% to 93% in earlier cycles.

The core of Thorn’s thesis is the resilience of the on-chain base. For the first time in any bear market, market value never slipped beneath realized value—the aggregate cost basis of all coins. The market-value-to-realized-value ratio bottomed at 1.10, compared with historical lows of 0.56, 0.69, and 0.75. That suggests forced sellers were absorbed before a classic “below-cost” flush. Short-term holders, who drove the rebound off $58,525, have an average cost near $74,811, leaving them about 9% in profit at current prices, yet the spent output profit ratio sits around 1.009—barely above parity—implying minimal profit-taking despite green PnL. Long-dormant supply isn’t pressuring the tape either: coins untouched for five years or more have been spent at roughly 34,000 BTC per month this year, about half the 2024 pace.

ETF behavior rounds out the structural picture. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs shed only 11% of their holdings from peak to trough while BTC’s price fell 53%, then added 87,000 BTC since the June low. That stickiness hints at mandates and asset allocation frameworks that don’t capitulate on price alone. Flows remain choppy—October swung from a $1 billion three-day inflow streak to two sessions of heavy outflows, leaving the month in the red—but the base of demand looks less flighty than in prior cycles.

The macro overlay is, paradoxically, doing some of the work for Bitcoin’s “debasement” narrative even as 5% yields compete for capital. Federal debt stands at $40.44 trillion, fiscal 2026 closed with a $1.99 trillion deficit, and the 10-year Treasury yield hit 5.31% this month, a high-water mark not seen since 2007. While the S&P 500 sits within 1% of a record, Bitcoin would need to rally about 53% to revisit its high—an asymmetry that some allocators will notice if they believe the cycle has already reset. Still, higher rates strengthen the dollar, tighten financial conditions, and raise the hurdle for risk assets; last week’s hotter inflation print revived bets on another Fed hike and briefly knocked BTC below $80,000. The push-pull is real.

I keep coming back to that unbroken realized-value floor. It points to a maturing market structure: ETFs and other programmatic buyers absorbing supply, long-dormant distribution easing, and short-term hands showing unusual restraint. The flip side is that a cycle without a traditional “below-cost” flush can nurture complacency. If price memory stays tight around the 50-week average—currently near $76,540—confidence can evaporate quickly on a decisive weekly close below that level that isn’t reclaimed within a month, which Thorn flags as his tripwire.

Thorn frames the current phase as favorable for accumulation and notes Bitcoin has already shown it can trade to at least $125,000; he sees no clear impediment to retaking that area over time. He and Galaxy disclose they hold Bitcoin. The thesis doesn’t require bravado—just acknowledgement that this cycle’s key tell wasn’t euphoria or despair, but the absence of a break below the chain’s cost basis, even while 5% Treasuries tried to steal the narrative.