The cryptocurrency market is flashing deep bearish signals as the year-end approaches.
As of writing, data from TradingView showed that 75 of the top 100 coins by market value traded below both their 50-day and 200-day simple moving averages (SMAs), indicating across-the-board weakness in the digital asset market.
This indicates capital flight from the crypto market in the wake of industry leader bitcoin’s BTC$85,944.78 slide to $87,000 from the record high of over $126,000 in early October.
The 50- and 200-day SMAs filter out day-to-day noise and smooth out price action to spot broader momentum shifts, and traders and investors widely track them. Think of these as guardrails: crossing below both signals underperformance against short- and long-term trends, often triggering intensified selling and accelerated declines.
In stark contrast, just 29 Nasdaq 100 stocks mirror this weakness, highlighting the still-bullish market breadth of technology stocks. Bitcoin is known to track Nasdaq moves closely, amplifying downside swings in bearish phases.
Bear grip tightens
Among the 75 trading below key averages are heavyweights like bitcoin, ether ETH$2,921.02, solana SOL$126.13, BNB BNB$859.39, and XRP$1.8818, which together command 78% of crypto’s $3 trillion market cap.
In other words, the biggest coins are flashing red across the charts, dragging the entire sector down like an anchor on a sinking ship.
These are the most liquid and institutionally traded assets, powering products like CME futures and spot ETFs. A bearish signal from them signals caution, making investors far less willing to chase risk into smaller, illiquid alternative cryptocurrencies.
This kind of weaker market breadth has historically brought more pain.
Only 8 coins oversold
Only eight of the top 100 coins qualify as oversold on the relative strength index (RSI) when filtering the 75 already trading under both their 50- and 200-day SMAs. These are PI, APT, ALGO, FLARE, VET, JUP, IP, KAIA.
This layered view sharpens the picture: the broad SMA breach shows widespread downtrends, but adding the RSI oversold filter, measuring exhausted selling momentum, narrows it to just 8. It means that most coins aren’t hitting panic bottoms yet and have room to fall further.
Traders see this as bearish confirmation, pointing to more downside before any meaningful bull revival.
The 14-day RSI measures recent price momentum on a 0-100 scale. Below-30 readings are said to represent oversold conditions, a sign that the asset has fallen a little too fast and may consolidate or bounce. Meanwhile, readings above 80 represent overbought conditions.
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/12/16/crypto-bear-grip-tightens-as-75-of-top-100-coins-trade-below-key-averages-vs-just-29-nasdaq-stocks

