Another Bitcoin Death Cross, Another Missed Bottom?<\/h2>\n
But the interesting bit isn\u2019t just the returns. It\u2019s Sigel\u2019s market regime column \u2014 basically a hint that the same technical signal can mean wildly different things depending on where you are in the cycle.<\/p>\n
![\"Bitcoin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbtc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/G8T5twSWYAYu1gg.png?resize=599%2C463\")
<\/p>\n
Take the ones tagged as some version of \u201cbottom.\u201d In 2011 (\u201cpost-bubble bottom\u201d), the death cross showed up around the wreckage of an early-cycle blow-off, and the next 12 months were +357%. In 2015 (\u201ccycle bottom\u201d), it was +82% at six months and +159% at 12 months \u2014 classic post-capitulation behavior where trend indicators catch up late, after price has already stabilized and started to turn.<\/p>\n
2020 (\u201cCovid bottom\u201d) is the extreme example: forced liquidation, policy response, then a monster rebound (+812% over 12 months). And 2023 is also tagged \u201ccycle bottom,\u201d with +173% at six months and +121% at 12 months \u2014 the kind of \u201cthis is awful until it isn\u2019t\u201d regime crypto does better than any asset class.<\/p>\n
Now look at \u201cstructural bear.\u201d That label shows up in 2014 (twice), 2018, and 2022 \u2014 and the forward returns are mostly ugly: 2014 prints -48% and -56% over 12 months, 2018 is -35%, and 2022 is -52%. Different environment. Less \u201cwashout and bounce,\u201d more \u201ctrend is down because the system is deleveraging,\u201d whether that\u2019s miners, credit, exchanges, or macro liquidity tightening. In those regimes, a death cross isn\u2019t a late alarm \u2014 it\u2019s the moving averages confirming that the downtrend is real and persistent.<\/p>\n
The in-between tags matter too. 2019 is marked \u201clate bear,\u201d with +9% at six months and +89% at 12 \u2014 choppy, uneven, but improving as the cycle turns. 2021 is \u201clate cycle\u201d: +30% at six months, then -43% at 12, which fits a regime where trend signals can whipsaw while distribution and macro tightening creep in.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s 2024: \u201cpost-ETF regime,\u201d with +58% at six months and +94% at 12. That tag is doing a lot of work. It suggests the backdrop isn\u2019t just \u201cprice vs. moving averages,\u201d but structural demand (ETFs), different liquidity plumbing, and a market that may behave less like pure reflexive leverage and more like a hybrid of trad-fi flows plus crypto-native positioning.<\/p>\n
So the takeaway isn\u2019t \u201cdeath crosses are bullish.\u201d That\u2019s not true. It\u2019s that the signal is mostly a trailing mirror \u2014 and the regime you\u2019re actually in (bottoming, late bear, structural deleveraging, late cycle, post-ETF flow market) is what decides whether it\u2019s a fake-out, a confirmation, or just noise with a scary name.<\/p>\n
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $86,631.<\/p>\n
![\"Bitcoin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbtc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/BTCUSDT_2025-12-17_08-19-01.png?resize=1024%2C473\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bitcoin\u2019s \u201cdeath cross\u201d is back in the group chat. And yes, the emails too. Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, said he\u2019s been \u201cgetting questions from clients\u201d about the latest death cross print \u2014 the 50-day moving average slipping under the 200-day \u2014 and answered with the kind of data dump that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[56,4248,55,69,61,120,121],"class_list":["post-8956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bitcoin-news","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitcoin-death-cross","tag-bitcoin-news","tag-bitcoin-price","tag-btc","tag-btc-news","tag-btc-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coinsvalue.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}