The cryptocurrency market is exhibiting significant bearish trends as it nears the end of the year. Current data from TradingView reveals a concerning scenario: 75 out of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are trading below both their 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages (SMAs). This broad underperformance indicates a significant weakness throughout the digital asset space, coinciding with a notable drop in Bitcoin’s value. The leading cryptocurrency has seen its price plummet from a peak of over $126,000 in early October to approximately $87,000, eliciting a wave of capital flight from the sector.
The 50-day and 200-day SMAs serve as crucial indicators for traders and investors, filtering out day-to-day price fluctuations and providing insights into broader market momentum. When assets fall below these averages, it often triggers intensified selling, signaling a lack of confidence and potentially leading to further declines. In contrast to the cryptocurrency landscape, only 29 stocks within the Nasdaq 100 are showing similar weakness, indicating a more resilient and bullish sentiment among technology stocks. Historically, Bitcoin has closely mirrored Nasdaq movements, amplifying its declines during bearish market phases.
The grip of bearish sentiment is tightening as major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, BNB, and XRP—collectively accounting for a staggering 78% of the cryptocurrency market’s $3 trillion cap—struggle below key moving averages. These leading assets play a pivotal role in influencing market dynamics, as they are liquid and often used in institutional trading products such as futures and spot ETFs. This underperformance has led to increased caution among investors, who become reluctant to invest in smaller, less liquid altcoins during such turbulent times.
Further analysis reveals that only eight of the top 100 cryptocurrencies are classified as oversold based on the relative strength index (RSI), while the remaining 75 continue to trade beneath both their 50- and 200-day SMAs. These eight tokens—PI, APT, ALGO, FLARE, VET, JUP, IP, and KAIA—indicate a limited number of assets that have reached panic levels in selling momentum. The current landscape suggests that most cryptocurrencies are not yet hitting bottom, implying they have further room to decline before any potential recovery can occur.
The 14-day RSI ranks price momentum on a scale from 0 to 100, where readings below 30 indicate oversold conditions, suggesting that an asset may have fallen too quickly and could either consolidate or experience a bounce. Conversely, readings above 80 indicate overbought conditions. Presently, the broader SMA breaches coupled with an unhealthy number of assets failing to hit panic levels depict a grim outlook, confirming traders’ fears of impending further downside before any meaningful bullish sentiment can take hold in the market.
