Bitcoin Falls Below $84,000 and Outflows Explode, NFCI Anticipates December Rally

Bitcoin's decline has deepened in recent weeks, with the flagship cryptocurrency breaching several key support levels. On Friday, it fell as low as $80,000, its lowest level in months. Despite an attempted rebound towards $84,000, the price remained under pressure, posting a decline of 12% for the week and 23% for the month. The fall below $84,000 also brought the price back to its 100-week exponential moving average, a threshold it has not touched since October 2023.

Record releases and increased market pressure

New data published by The Kobeissi Letter on November 21 shows the extent of the current decline. According to the newsletter, bitcoin's plunge on Friday led to more than $1.5 billion in leveraged liquidations in just four hours, revealing how quickly forced selling was escalating.

In another press release, the Kobeissi Letter highlights that investors are withdrawing capital from crypto products at an exceptional rate. Outflows reached $2 billion last week, the highest level since February. Over three consecutive weeks, cumulative withdrawals amount to $3.2 billion.

Bitcoin led the outflows with $1.4 billion, followed by ethereum with $689 million. With the price falling, crypto funds' assets under management have fallen 27% since their October peak, falling to $191 billion. This decline is considered structural rather than temporary.

In the United States, spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) added to the pressure, recording a third week of withdrawals, peaking at $1.22 billion.

Historical signals: NFCI points to a rebound in December

While some traders look for bottom signals through charts and on-chain data, analyst Miad Kasravi takes a broader macroeconomic approach. He conducted a ten-year backtest of 105 financial indicators and concluded that the National Financial Conditions Index (NFCI) is one of the few indicators that consistently provides a four to six week lead on major bitcoin movements.

Kasravi presented several historical examples:

• In October 2022, the NFCI began to ease, signaling looser financial conditions as bitcoin stagnated around $16,000.
• During this period, institutional investors accumulated quietly while the majority of traders remained in the background. Three months later, in January 2023, the price had climbed from $16,000 to $31,000, or +94% in six months.
• A similar pattern emerged in mid-2024: after a spike in tension in July, bitcoin bottomed around $53,000, before an influx of buying in late August propelled its price above $107,000, for a 98% rally.

Currently, Kasravi observes the NFCI at -0.52 and still falling, with the index potentially heading towards -0.60, an area historically correlated with gains of 15% to 20% in bitcoin for every 0.10 point decline.

Rising liquidity: what this means for bitcoin in the short term

Kasravi also points to an imminent policy change at the Federal Reserve in December: The central bank will shift its mortgage-backed securities to Treasury bonds. Although this operation is not formally qualified as quantitative easing, its effect is similar since it increases bank liquidity, reminiscent of the “not-QE” episode of 2019 which preceded a bitcoin rally of 40% in three months.

If the NFCI continues to decline until mid-December, this could mark the start of a new phase of liquidity expansion. Taking into account the historical lag of four to six weeks between the index and major market movements, this pattern suggests a potential significant cyclical movement of bitcoin between early and mid-December 2025.

When this signal appears, bitcoin has historically outperformed altcoins by 20% to 30% in the initial phase, with large investors first positioning themselves on the most liquid asset before moving towards smaller capitalization tokens.