A subtle bull market in 2025 might make the next bear market shallower

Looks like we might be seeing a change in how Bitcoin's price is behaving. So, the rally we had in 2025 looks pretty different when you check it out on a log scale: If you put that next to the 2021 rally on the same scale: You can see 2021 was way steeper, probably because of all that FOMO going around. 2017 and 2013 were even wilder. But with 2025, sure, we had some dips followed by some big moves up, but nothing like the crazy parabolic spikes we saw in 2021. Here’s what I’m thinking: how traders and investors act with Bitcoin is a lot influenced by what’s going on in people’s heads. Folks are aware that a sharp rally often leads to massive profit-taking, where everyone tries to cash out at once. That’s usually when panic kicks in, sending prices down hard and dragging us into those brutal bear markets we've seen (like in 2018 and 2022), where we lost over 75% from the all-time highs. But if the rally is more chill, then profit-taking could happen in waves. Not everyone would rush to sell at the same moment. That could help avoid those wild panic sell-offs. Another thing that might help prices even in bearish times is the growing presence of institutional investors. They might sell sometimes to take profits or limit losses, but I don’t think they react as wildly as retail investors do. Plus, there are some like Strategy who only sell when things get really extreme. What are your thoughts? How deep do you think the next bear market will be, and what’s driving that? (And I've added a poll to this.) Just to clarify, I’m not saying we’re already in a bear market.

Just as you have mentioned, there is likely high probability of having all time high this year end or even got shifted towards the new year, once we already have the mind that the last one for the season is yet to be marked. Secondly, if we look from the chart and also dice into some aspects of it's historic performance, both on a short and long time frame, we are going to see the more on how positive it is in having the market performs more better even than we expected, where we are currently could be the least for the month and before you knew it, we are already back in the bullrun nto mark some new heights as usually expected.

There might be a less deep in the upcoming bear market than it was in the previous year. After considering the too many involvement (interest) of so many companies into Bitcoin, even the government too showing interest to have Bitcoin reserve, and more massive adoption that is forthcoming, I have to think that the bear market won't look like the past season unless there's a sudden economic disaster which could unexpectedly arise to make price deep so bad.

We have to observe if the institutional involvement continues to grow even in less bullish times. That's a bit of the problem with the ETFs: it also gives new sources of funds to the bears to short sell with much higher amounts of capital. However, in general the liquidity should increase on both sides (buy and sell orders), which means that if the actors are relatively rational (and not delusional) then the price should be more stable. Regarding further adoption, IMO the next bear market could generate either a vicious cycle, if it is deeper than expected and both institutionals and retailers flee Bitcoin, or a virtuous cycle, if people realize that it is a good idea to fish dips because the price will usually recover. This could even happen in a slight bear market (e.g. less than 5% loss per month, like in mid-2024), because the dips often go much deeper due to liquidations, and thus if you buy in the moment of "maximum panic" there's always a big chance (way over 50%) you'll make a decent profit.

Absolutely with how much interesting institutions and governments are quite increasing in Bitcoin adoption since the ETF approved Bitcoin spot, market price has seemly to be  prove false breakout when volatilities is signaling market falls because, investors now buys Bitcoin on the regular basis while whalers with their aggressive purchasing of Bitcoins has also been showing strong edge on the equilibrium consolidating price whereas, volatilities does not experience too weak during bearish phase like the past events when market capitulation spikes lack of confidence amongst investors and traders.

This institutional trader can be a double edge sword since a sell-off from one of this big holders will surely create panic on a bear market. However, my opinion is more on they will not let their holdings collapse just for the sake exiting the market on bear market. There’s a chance that other institutional trader will add more holdings and other country might scoop a cheap Bitcoin for their reserve.

They provably won't exit in this way since its like they a doing suicide if they sell at lose. Only those people do this actions are small time traders and we don't see any big institutions do massive sell offs. What provably going to happen is they are the one will catch those dips and provably they take advantage to accumulate Bitcoin when market is dumping. As usual for sure we will see this bad market pressure will end up soon and Bitcoin will start to recover. But it seems that there are lots of article still pointing out that we might still have a great season next year despite of those challenges we experience this days https://hodlfm.com/bitcoin/bitcoin-price-prediction-2026/

To me as long as the market is still above 100k then this may not be the beginning of the bear market because already as we know during month of December, somewhere around 3rd week of December, like closing of Q4 there is always a sharp price increase which would boost the market a bit higher than expected. This , during that period we can say that is holiday/ festive moment and many people have closed from their various works, business or most of them might taken leave and focusing on their trading when there is high activity within the space it also pushes price higher than expected.

Some of the early ETF investors might have bought already in the 38-50k area at the beginning of the year 2024, or in the 50-73k area we saw during most of the remainder of 2024. So they have still plenty of margin to sell with a profit even if Bitcoin dumps significantly below 100,000. Of course, some of them have already sold, the question is how many. Let's look at the inflow/outflow chart: Source: https://www.coinglass.com/bitcoin-etf I think there is a good chance that of the 2024 investors there is still a part on board, and most of them invested far below 100,000 USD. Anyway they will not take the decision lightly. And there are indeed significant inflows still in the +100,000 phase. And ETF maintainance costs are probably also a factor to consider. I believe they will largely sell and buy approximately in the same weeks like retailers (as shown in that chart), but with a difference: they will react slower, and thus not deepen existing dips that much more. Interesting. They base their prediction mainly on the expected profits in the post-halving period. It's surprising for me though that they expect the cycle peak in January 2026 and not 1-2 months earlier. So unfortunately I have to disagree with this prediction. My expectation is however that the bull market could continue in 2026 if the year end dip (which may have already started) is weaker than expected and sentiment turns positive again. That may be the end of the 4 year cycles, and we may be shifting towards cycles based on real adoption.

This is my concern about the deep. I don't think if this begins to happen ( or if it has started already) that it will go deeper than what it was the last halving which was around $65k / $70k if I'm not mistaken. And with this I don't expect that price will go lower than this with the rate of growth from institutions and their hodling. Also with the countries of the likes of US looking to make bitcoin part of their reserve. Bitcoin is traded and we expect an active market from that area daily growing its volume daily. For the majority of what we are going to see as deep may be correction that may not have the pushing strength down because at a point, buyers who are trading on it will pump in liquidity causing volatility often and on.

The only usual about bitcoin occurrence about price is the regular volatility events in the market, the only event that we can consider and be hopeful is that bitcoin has proven a custom of the 4 years cycles which includes the bearish and the bullish events but being hopeful and a short term expectant due to historic performance could be a wrong decision because the buying pressures and selling pressures of traders in the past and present may not be same volumes. So long term goal is always the best.

65-70k would be around the 50% mark if the previous ATH stays at $126k. I think going a bit deeper than the old ATH (I guess that's what you meant, or did you really mean the halving price? Old ATHs were often quite good supports) is possible as shown in 2022. If people concede too much importance to this price and build up long positions, this can give opportunities to bears to break them, which could send the price a step deeper. So in general I would this time predict a low in the 50-70k range if no catastrophic even occurs but normal panics and profit taking of old hodlers continue. However, there is also a possible much more bullish scenario, partly due to what you wrote here: While the reserve itself will not have potential to stabilize the price, there was an interview a few days ago where Trump was giving very optimistic signs about "crypto". It's possible thus that (partially for personal benefit) the US government could try to manipulate the price to the upside, for example with generous announcements about the reserve when the price dipped significantly below 100,000$. As I wrote in the OP, I also expect much less panic potential to the downside as many hodlers have already sold in this bull market. On the other hand that means also more high-price buyers, so the effect could be a bit weaker, but I would still consider it significant.

So, we always thought Bitcoin could become less and less volatile down the road, yeah? I totally agree that how people feel about Bitcoin really drives its ups and downs.  When everyone is super hyped and buying like crazy, like back in 2021, that pretty much guarantees a big crash later.  When folks are just buying no matter what, the switch to selling no matter what is usually pretty brutal.  Which causes those huge drops in the market, like in 2018 and 2022, where it lost 75% or more of its value. Now, if your idea about a quieter rally is right, then we might be getting closer to how normal investments act.  So, maybe the drops wont be as bad, like maybe only 50% to 60% from the highest point.

There is fear in the market and I don't know why people are scared thinking the bear is going to take over the price of Bitcoin. I think we have enough time to enjoy this bull run and this is not yet when Bitcoin supposed to go down and shock the entire market. There are big players in the market now and we don't have to be scared of the bear expect price became a victim of manipulation from the whales which I know it's not yet the time big players would be buying and selling their capital to trap other investors.

I like your conclusion of this topic because a lot of people have zeroed their mind that if there is no new ATH high before the end of this year, then 2026 will be bearish but that may not be completely correct and just like you rightly said, it's a 50/50 chance. A lot have changed in the market, we have Bitcoin ETF now and a lot of countries are already planning to establish Bitcoin reserve. Assuming that happens from next year and we see an aggressive competition among rhw countries in acquiring Bitcoin, this will definitely lead to a surge in price before the end of next year. This is just one option that can trigger a bull run next year.

So, there are these charts that show buyer cost basis and this used to be a decent indicator in the previous bear markets. I've seen that shown by people who have access to glassnode. This is right now just above 60k for long term holders and going up and should always be a level from which the market shifts because the pressure is always on the more recent buyers. These are people ready to sell at a loss, but if someone held since the last bear market and held through that correction to 74k last April, they're not going to be pressured into selling when the price goes back to that level. So, where could we go in a bear market? It depends on when it begins, because I think that we haven't had a real bull run yet, so even a move back to something like 70k would be just like the mid cycle crash of 2021 where everybody thought it was the end and then we went to a new high. If we were to go down more, I'd expect it to only dip to 95k and then go back above 100.

Bitcoin have recorded a significant success in it market since the year 2025 began and we have seen alot of volatilities that have played out, I won't doubt that speculators are already calling the current price drop as bear market forgetting so fast how the last all time highs happened and what we saw with in a short period of time, so we expected the current corrections in price of Bitcoin, just like what we are seeing currently.

With how Bitcoin plays out I think this wouldn't be a steep bear market anymore especially with how institutions are involved these days but that's a double edge sword of course but if they do hold that means we can even hold the 2021 ATH as support. I've read one article just recently and probably we're in a distribution phase but still hovering around the $100k region, it's probably the OGs are selling but to the point that even that sell pressure doesn't affect much the whole market, it was more of speculation but I think it has basis. It was this article and probably a good read: https://visserlabs.substack.com/p/bitcoins-silent-ipo-why-this-consolidation

Is there any such thing as the festive season in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency? Because in our calendar weeks, we are almost concluding the year and this is a time where a lot of expenses are made, where people gets to prepare gifts and decorations to be inclusive in the festivities. What this could mean is, investors having to take profit as well as weak hands which can easily turn to mean further dumps with price at $126k being a significant high to close the year 2025.

Bearish might not be as bad as before as long as there's no black swan event. The bearish shift always followed with some collapses, back then it was FTX and things cascade into bigger liquidity problem. Right now vault curators are exploding left and right because reckless stablecoin management causes depegging in USDX, USDX, DeUSD and many more but it's not as massive as UST collapse. If the scale of such thing is smaller I'm sure the drawback will be smaller as well, I just think that the drawback will be 20% at most. Talking about bitcoin price action again, I'm pretty dang sure profit taking already take place but the market is just strong so the chart didn't drastic move.