Bitcoin Bear Benjamin Cowen Admits Defeat as BTC Tops $86,000 in Short Squeeze

Bitcoin punched through $86,000 on Monday, its highest level in eight months, as a wave of forced short covering tore through the derivatives market and put the loudest Bitcoin bears in the uncomfortable position of admitting they were wrong.

THE SQUEEZE THAT DID THE HEAVY LIFTING

The move was not a story of fresh buyers rushing in. It was shorts getting run over. More than $648 million in bearish positions were liquidated within a 24-hour window, with over $262 million wiped out in a single hour as Bitcoin approached $84,000. Analytics firm Glassnode had flagged the $82,000 to $86,000 range as a wall of accumulated short positions built up over months. That wall got taken out.

Bitcoin's market capitalization climbed back to roughly $1.71 trillion. When a trader betting against Bitcoin gets margin called, their broker has to buy Bitcoin to close the position. That buying pushes the price higher, which margin calls the next trader, and the cycle feeds itself until the wall of shorts is gone.

THE SIGNAL EVERYONE WAS WATCHING

The number that mattered more than the price itself came from Alex Thorn, head of firmwide research at Galaxy. Thorn flagged that Bitcoin's weekly close finished above its 50-week moving average for the first time in 45 weeks, a level that had acted as a hard ceiling since Bitcoin lost it in mid-November 2025. "Regaining the 50w MA has historically served as strong confirmation that bear market lows are in," Thorn wrote, adding that Bitcoin is up 29% in 35 days.

The historical record backs him up. Across 13 prior instances of Bitcoin reclaiming the 50-week average during a bear market, only two were followed by another lower low, and both came during the 2021 to 2022 crash. Bitcoin's bear market low landed at $58,525 on June 30, a 53.1% drop from October 2025's record high of $124,824.

THE CAPITULATION

No single moment captured the shift better than Benjamin Cowen's morning post. Cowen has spent months as one of the most followed voices arguing Bitcoin's four-year cycle pointed to a later, deeper low, favoring an October bottom over an earlier one. On Monday, watching Bitcoin clear its May high, he folded. "Bitcoin breaking through the May high. This is not what I had on my bingo card for this year," he wrote, adding plainly, "I was wrong. Not going to make excuses. I deserve to be dunked on."

Cowen's retreat did not declare the bear market over outright, and he stopped short of issuing a new price target. But for an analyst who had built a large following on time-based capitulation calls, walking back the October thesis in public carries weight. He was not alone. Newsletter writer Checkmate had also been pushing back on anyone still defending the four-year cycle framework as intact.

WHY THIS TIME GETS TAKEN SERIOUSLY

Institutional buyers were already leaning bullish before Monday's squeeze. Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, told CNBC last week that Bitcoin's volatility has fallen by roughly half over the past four years, a structural shift he said reflects heavier institutional participation rather than retail speculation. "Our conversations with institutional clients, whether it's advisers, sovereign wealth funds, they are buying," Sigel said, pointing to elevated demand for downside protection and short covering tied to Treasury buyback programs as signs the calendar favors Bitcoin bulls into year end.

None of that guarantees a straight line higher. A hold above the 50-week average, now sitting near $78,786, is the real test of whether Monday's close was the start of a new leg or a one-week fluke. But between the size of the short squeeze, the technical signal Galaxy has tracked since August, and a prominent bear publicly conceding the bottom, Monday gave Bitcoin bulls the clearest confirmation they have had since the cycle low.

This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.