Bitcoin Bull Market Progress: Where Are We? Master These 7 Key Indicators to Avoid Blindly Calling the Top

Overview

Bitcoin surged for two consecutive days on September 21 and 22, with its price returning to the $86,000 level. According to CNBC, Bitcoin hit an intraday high of $86,349.90 that day, its highest level since late January, up more than 8% over the past week and about 34% over the past three months. Bitwise's Chief Investment Officer said on a program that he believes this crypto winter has ended. Fortune's price record shows that on the morning of September 22, US Eastern Time, Bitcoin was trading at $86,039.36.

The price has returned, but the questions have not become any simpler. Bitcoin remains about 30% below its all-time high of roughly $126,000 set in October 2025, and $86,000 happens to be the ceiling that on-chain data has repeatedly marked over the past month. To assess where we are in the cycle, we need to look at seven types of verifiable evidence together—drawdown depth, cost basis, valuation ranges, capital flows, stablecoin liquidity, holder behavior, and market rotation—rather than relying on a single moving average or a single day's sentiment reading.

Key Takeaways

The cycle is compressing, not disappearing. Bitcoin peaked on October 6, 2025, about eighteen months after the April 2024 halving, consistent with the previous two cycles. However, this cycle's decline from peak to the low of roughly $58,000 in June 2026 was about 54%, far smaller than the 77% to 87% bear market range seen previously.

The ceiling is drawn by three independent datasets. Long-term holder cost distribution, the futures liquidation chart, and the spot ETF breakeven point all point to a resistance zone of $83,000 to $86,000.

Bottom signals have been exhausted, but top signals have yet to appear. Glassnode's cycle indicator dashboard shows that the share of indicators in the coldest range fell to 2% after reaching 82% at the end of June, but three-quarters of indicators remain below their respective historical medians.

New demand is still the missing piece. Realized cap growth was interrupted in mid-September, the total stablecoin supply has not hit a new high in five months, and net buying by public companies over the past three months is far below the same period last year.

The macro environment has not turned accommodative. The Federal Reserve raised rates by 25 basis points to 3.75%–4% on September 16, the CLARITY Act is stalled in the Senate, and Bitcoin completed this rally in an environment of rising interest rates.

A Compressed Cycle

Decline Depth Is Only Half of the Historical Range

Bitcoin.com's comprehensive review of the four-year cycle provides a key comparison. Bitcoin peaked at about $126,200 on October 6, 2025, roughly eighteen months after the April 2024 halving, while the peaks after the 2016 and 2020 halvings occurred at about seventeen and eighteen months respectively—the timing rhythm has not been broken. What has truly changed is the magnitude: this cycle's decline from peak to the low of roughly $58,000 in June 2026 represents a drawdown of about 54%, while the three bear markets of 2014, 2018, and 2022 wiped out approximately 87%, 84%, and 77% respectively.

Speculative intensity has also clearly converged. MVRV, which measures the ratio of market value to on-chain cost, peaked at 2.74 in 2025, compared to peaks of 3.96, 4.72, and 5.88 in the previous three cycles. The market did become expensive, but never approached past extremes. The same review also notes two historical firsts in this cycle: Bitcoin set a new high above the previous cycle's peak before the halving, and the year following the halving posted a negative annual close for the first time. Putting these together, a more accurate description is that the cycle is compressing, not that the cycle has ended.

What the Rally Fixed, and What It Left Behind

From the June low to late September, Bitcoin recovered most of its losses, but the recovery was uneven. August was the strongest month of the year, with spot ETFs recording $3.52 billion in net inflows for the month, narrowing the year-to-date cumulative net outflow from about $5.29 billion to about $1.77 billion. Sentiment indicators also returned from extreme fear in June to the greedy side in September. Meanwhile, the price tested the $83,000–$86,000 range three times without success, only approaching it again with this late-September surge.

This is the core tension of the current cycle position: evidence of a bottoming zone is quite sufficient, evidence of a topping zone has not yet formed, and the direction of the middle segment depends on whether new capital is willing to take over the largest block of trapped supply in an environment of rising interest rates.

Seven Indicators for Tracking Cycle Position

Drawdown Depth and the Halving Clock

The most basic coordinates are the distance from the all-time high and where we are in the halving cycle. Nasdaq's halving schedule shows that the fourth halving in April 2024 reduced the block subsidy from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, with the next halving expected around April 2028 at block height 1,050,000. Based on the historical rhythm of peaking at eighteen months and bottoming at twelve to fourteen months, the second half of 2026 should be somewhere between bottoming and re-accumulation.

When using this indicator, be aware of its diminishing effect. More than 95% of all Bitcoin has been mined, annualized new supply is below 1%, and the marginal selling pressure that halvings can remove shrinks with each cycle. The halving clock today is more of an expectation-coordination device than a strong supply-demand causal factor.

The On-Chain Cost Basis Ladder

More informative than price is a set of cost lines. According to Glassnode's weekly on-chain report published on September 16, the average cost of active investors—the true market mean—is at $76,700, the short-term holder cost basis for buyers over the past five months is at $71,300, and the average cost for public company treasuries is at $80,500. Further up, the previous week's report noted that the $83,000–$86,000 range concentrates the purchase cost of approximately 1.07 million BTC, almost entirely belonging to long-term holders, with the densest cluster near $85,000; the US spot ETF breakeven point based on cumulative subscription cost is approximately $86,000, and has closed below that level for 228 consecutive trading days.

This ladder turns the abstract "bull or bear" into testable positional relationships. When price rises above the true market mean, it indicates that active holdings as a whole have returned to profitability; reclaiming $86,000 would mean the largest institutional buyers of the year have returned to unrealized gains for the first time, and the nature of the thickest supply pressure overhead would change accordingly. The late-September rally pushed the price right to this line, which is why this surge is more noteworthy than previous attempts.

MVRV and Cycle Valuation Ranges

MVRV and its standardized form, the Z-score, measure how far market value has deviated from on-chain cost. CoinGlass's MVRV Z-score chart demonstrates its classic usage: values entering high ranges typically correspond to cycle tops, while falling below near the zero axis corresponds to major bottoms throughout history. Looking at it alongside the previous cycle's peak of 2.74, the more realistic conclusion is that as market size expands, historical thresholds themselves may need to be revised downward, and mechanically applying the extremes of 2017 or 2021 could mean missing positions for extended periods.

Glassnode's cycle indicator dashboard provides another cross-section. The share of indicators in the coldest range reached 82% in the week of June 29 and remained above the long-term median for 41 consecutive weeks—the strongest bottoming convergence of this cycle—and has now fallen to 2% in the most recent complete week. At the same time, three-quarters of indicators remain below their respective historical medians, and for 43 consecutive weeks, more than half of indicators have not been above 50. Valuations have left the value zone, but they are not yet expensive.

ETF Flows and Realized Cap

Spot ETFs have turned the comings and goings of traditional capital into daily readable data. Farside Investors' daily flow table shows that September's capital flows swung violently: September 15 and 16 saw combined net outflows of about $746 million, September 17 and 18 turned to net inflows of $159.5 million and $433 million, and September 21 recorded a single-day net inflow of about $999 million, one of the strongest trading days in recent months. August's $3.52 billion net inflow was the year's best monthly performance.

The corresponding on-chain indicator is realized cap, the total value of all coins calculated at their last on-chain transfer price. Glassnode's data shows that realized cap rose for 27 consecutive days before September 14, saw its first net outflow in 28 days on September 15, and then weakened again. The logic of using both together is straightforward: if price rises without a simultaneous expansion in realized cap, it means the rally is being driven by existing token turnover and leverage rather than new capital entering the market.

Stablecoin Supply—The "Ammunition"

Total stablecoin supply is a proxy for idle capital waiting on the sidelines. Glassnode noted in its mid-September report that total stablecoin market cap is about $301 billion, flat for the week, about 4% below the April 2026 peak, and has not hit a new high in five months, with its thirty-day growth rate still slightly below the historical range that corresponds to Bitcoin's strongest performance the following month. DefiLlama's stablecoin dashboard allows daily tracking of this data.

The value of this indicator lies in measuring "whether new dollars are entering" rather than "what existing capital is doing." Stablecoin supply contracted during the summer and has now stopped falling but has not expanded, meaning this rally was primarily driven by existing capital and short covering. If stablecoin supply re-enters an acceleration range and hits a new high, that would be the missing piece of the bull market narrative.

Long-Term Holder Behavior and the Sell-Side Risk Ratio

The most reliable evidence for judging whether the cycle is near a top comes from whether holders are distributing. The sell-side risk ratio standardizes the sum of realized profits and realized losses against realized cap. Glassnode's calculations show that the seven-day average of this indicator has fallen to 7 basis points per day, less than half of August's high of 16 basis points, while at the two peaks in July and October 2025, the same indicator rose to 35 and 23 basis points respectively. Long-term holders' share of realized profits also fell from 88% at the August high to 47%.

Corporate treasuries have been similarly quiet. Public companies' net purchases over the past three months totaled about 5,900 BTC, compared to about 89,000 BTC in July 2025 alone. A change emerged in late September: according to Strategy's 8-K filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company bought 950 BTC between September 14 and 20 for $75.7 million at an average price of $79,670, bringing its holdings to 846,000 coins at an average cost of $75,416. The Block's report noted that this was the company's first purchase in about three weeks, and its holdings now exceed 4% of Bitcoin's total supply of 21 million. The 950-coin weekly scale is still small compared to last year's pace, but the directional change is worth noting.

Altcoin Rotation and Options Positioning

Cycle tops are typically accompanied by capital accelerating down the risk curve. Glassnode's calculations show that in three of the four historical peaks, altcoins' share of total "Bitcoin plus altcoin" market cap rose by at least 2.8 percentage points in the preceding ninety days; the current reading is negative 0.9 percentage points. Altcoins rose about 21% in USD terms over the past month, yet did not take share from Bitcoin—inconsistent with the rotation characteristics of a mature top.

Derivatives positioning provides another cross-section. After the Senate vote fell through on September 15, the one-week 25-delta skew turned from negative to positive, with the options market beginning to pay a premium for downside protection; the quarterly contract expiring September 25 has a max pain point at $72,000, while the largest call option wall above the current price is at $85,000, with a second at $90,000. The options market and spot cost distribution give nearly identical answers on the location of overhead resistance.

Macro Remains the Primary Pricing Variable

Real Interest Rates After the Rate Hike

The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate target range to 3.75%–4% in its policy implementation note on September 16, and raised the interest rate on reserve balances to 3.90%. CNBC's report noted that this was the first rate hike since July 2023, and the updated dot plot showed that 16 of 18 participants expect at least one more rate hike this year. Core inflation fell over the same period, meaning that even if the policy rate stays put, real interest rates are automatically rising.

This explains why this rally differs from previous cycle starting points. Historically, Bitcoin's major advances have mostly been accompanied by liquidity expansion, but this time, the price recovery was completed against a backdrop of rising interest rates and long-end yields at cycle highs. Yahoo Finance's daily market summary cited falling oil prices and a short squeeze as the direct triggers for the late-September surge—drivers whose sustainability is typically weaker than the liquidity cycle itself.

Policy Setback and Risk Appetite

According to CNBC, the US Senate's procedural vote on September 15 failed to advance the CLARITY Act, dealing a setback to the crypto industry's efforts to push market structure legislation. What's noteworthy is Bitcoin's reaction: prices fell only slightly that week and actually strengthened the following week, while altcoins fell significantly more. The policy setback did not break through Bitcoin's pricing center, but it clearly exposed the fragility at the lower end of the risk curve.

How to Use These Indicators

Define the Bull Market First, Then Judge Position

The reason "is this a bull market" is endlessly debated is largely due to a lack of definition. An actionable definition requires at least three conditions to hold simultaneously: price holds above the upper bound of the cost range for long-term holders and ETFs, realized cap continues to expand, and total