Is this a true recovery or just a dead cat bounce?
Kraken VP of growth Matt Howells-Barby and pro trader Dentoshi (Den) spent the session digging into the macro catalysts, the key technical levels and what traders should realistically expect in the weeks ahead.
As always, nothing discussed is financial advice — only market commentary and education.
Macro: why everything hinges on the December rate cut
Before diving into charts, Matt unpacked the macro environment behind last week’s huge swings. In short, it’s all about rate cuts and the lack of reliable data.
Here’s what happened:
The market’s expectation for a December rate cut dropped as low as 33% last Thursday — the lowest since the previous Fed meeting
A series of hawkish remarks from non-voting Fed officials spooked markets
The U.S. government shutdown meant missing datasets including no October non-farm payrolls report
September’s jobs report was mixed:
Unemployment ticked up (rate-cut friendly)
Payrolls surged far above expectations (rate-cut unfriendly)
Then sentiment flipped:
NY Fed President John Williams voiced support for a December cut
Governor Waller, historically dovish, echoed the same
Within hours, the market swung back to ~77% odds of a December cut
The result: equities rallied and crypto followed. BTC’s weekend rebound is almost a mirror image of these shifts.
Why this matters for crypto
Crypto sits at the furthest end of the risk curve. If money is pulling out of AI equities, it’s pulling out of crypto twice as fast — and when liquidity returns, crypto feels it twice as strongly.
The next major catalysts:
PPI on Tuesday (the big one to watch)
PCE later in the week
Initial jobless claims (a key proxy while other data is missing)
A low PPI print could push rate-cut expectations toward 90%+, and a hot inflation surprise could trigger another wobble across risk assets.
“Time to clear the charts” – Den on why the structure has changed
Den made a strong point early: this is the first true structural breakdown of the bull trend.
Specifically, BTC has lost the 3-day 100 EMA — a level that held throughout the entire bull market so far.
Previous pulls back to this EMA had always produced clean bounces. This time, we got a clean break.
According to Den:
“When something that has worked all the way through the cycle suddenly stops working, that’s your signal to start fresh. Clear the charts. Reset the bias.”
The speed and shape of the recent dump also stood out:
No reaction at several major levels (yearly open, ETF cost basis, prior supports)
No “standard” bull-market bounces
A type of breakdown more reminiscent of capitulation than controlled retrace
This doesn’t mean the cycle is over, but it does mean the market we’re in now is not the same market we were in three weeks ago.
BTC: a strong bounce but with heavy work ahead
BTC has moved sharply off the lows, but context is key.
The monthly chart
Den calls it “super rejection-y.” The first obvious magnet is the cluster of lows below.
The new range
Starting fresh, Den mapped BTC into a wide structural range defined by:
Support zone: low–mid $70ks
Major resistance 1: yearly open
Major resistance 2: around $100k (mid-range confluence plus psychological level)
Major resistance 3: 2024 highs and the local cluster of equal highs
BTC is now pushing off support, but according to Den:
“We have a lot of resistance above us. It would be more logical to see a move toward $100k and reject than to expect a straight reclaim — unless risk assets go absolutely wild.”
A positive sign: the first 4h trend shift
For the first time since late October, BTC has:
Broken above the 4h EMAs
Established early low-timeframe bullish structure
Pulled a clean deviation-and-reclaim out of Den’s support zone
This supports a relief bounce but doesn’t confirm a full recovery.
The psychological challenge
Four consecutive red weekly candles have people shaken. Den’s advice:
Look for strength (reclaiming levels)
Or look for logical sweeps of key levels
But don’t blindly knife-catch
“Zoom into the lower timeframes. Find structure that makes sense. Let it align with your higher timeframe thesis.”
ETH: oversold mid-range bounce but still a long road back
Den joked that looking at ETH “hurts,” but the chart is cleaner than BTC’s.
ETH’s range is extremely well-defined. The mid-range in the $2,800s held — exactly where Den expected a mean-reversion bounce.
She noted that:
The stochastic RSI
Cuban’s reversion bands
Pure price structure
All pointed toward oversold conditions.
ETH is now pushing a local trend shift faster than BTC, but:
“It’s a long way to go. The more you dump, the more work you need to get back to the same place.”
The real test for ETH is reclaiming level-to-level resistance looming above us; starting with the Yearly Open, 1D EMA’s, and quarterly range levels (not shown in this stream).
We want to have a conservative approach and not directly aim towards cycle highs; it’s a step-by-step approach. Until then, everything is provisional.
What broke? Why 10 October changed everything
Both Matt and Den agreed something changed in mid-October.
Den’s observations:
Zero bounce at key high-probability levels, which is rare in past cycles
Yearly open ignored, despite being untouched since early in the year
Speed of breakdown inconsistent with prior bull-market pullbacks
Daily EMAs about to cross bearish for the first time since the FTX collapse
That doesn’t confirm a macro top, but it absolutely confirms a behavioral shift.
BTC is acting differently. Alts are acting differently.
The bear case: what would confirm a cycle top?
Den laid out her criteria carefully.
1. Daily EMAs crossing bearish
This is already in motion, and the last time we saw it was during the FTX period.
2. Rejections at key reclaim levels
If BTC tags the yearly open or $100k and gets slammed straight back down, that would be a very bearish signal.
3. Sweeping into the mid-$60ks to mid-$70ks and dumping straight through
These levels hold enormous structural significance (2021 highs, untested liquidity). A clean break through them would imply:
Structure fully broken
Likely cycling into a multi-month accumulation phase
A path toward high-$40ks forming over many months
Importantly, Den does not see an immediate collapse to $60k or $40k happening in one shot.
“If we ever get to the $40ks again, it will be a long bleed-out, not a fast V-reversal.”
There is a lot of liquidity between $60k–$70k that has not been revisited since the 2022–23 base.
Total market charts: still holding… barely
Den walked through TOTAL and TOTAL3:
TOTAL is sandwiched between the 2021 ATH and rejected highs
The attempted breakdown last week did not continue, which is slightly bullish
If TOTAL re-enters the prior range from below, that would be a strong structural breakdown signal
TOTAL3 (alts excluding BTC and ETH) still clings to trend support despite many alts looking awful individually
On all charts, the story is the same:
We’re holding for now, but the next move decides everything.
Macro momentum: the case for optimism
Matt wrapped with a cautiously optimistic outlook.
If December brings a rate cut, even a small one, it may not send BTC to all-time highs immediately, but:
It restores momentum
It unlocks risk appetite
It creates a path toward Q1 and Q2 follow-through, especially with data returning after months of silence
Between a new Fed chair, pent-up economic releases and the renewed correlation between BTC and the Nasdaq 100, the next few inflation prints will decide the fate of the first half of 2025.
So… dead cat bounce or recovery?
The honest answer:
We won’t know this week.
We need to see:
How BTC behaves at the yearly open
Whether ETH can hold the midrange and reclaim some levels to the upside
If TOTAL can hold 2021 ATHs
How markets digest PPI, PCE and jobless claims
Den summed it up:
“Something has clearly changed. The question is: how different, and for how long?”
The next few weeks will define that. Catch the whole stream here:
Stay updated
We’ll be back to our regular schedule after Thanksgiving with the next full episode on December 5 (or sooner if volatility demands emergency deployment).
Make sure you’re following:
And try Kraken desktop if you want the charting setups Den and Matt used in this session. It’s free for all Kraken users.
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