At what price do we start to get concerned about whether we are still in a bull market?
There had been a few times that I had suggested a willingness to bet that the BTC price won't go below 20% above the 200-WMA prior to the end of 2025, even though now I am starting to get worried about the solidness of such hypothetical bet of mine, since I was thinking of such bet as a 50/50 bet, which meant that I thought that the odds would be in my favor that such lower than 20% above the 200-WMA would take place prior to the end of 2025.
Right now, as I type this post,
the 200-WMA is $38,760, which means that 20% above that would be $46,512. Even though I would end up losing my hypothetical bet (that no one had been willing to take the other side), I am not sure if getting below that $46,512 price or even getting below the 200-WMA of $38,760 would constitute that we would have had entered into a bear market.
My perhaps technically insophisticated understanding of a bear market is when the odds for going down become greater than the odds for going up, and surely I don't have really strict criteria for when those conditions might trigger.. I am not that much hinged upon tying myself to specific numbers, even though sometimes, I get a sense when we had switched. I recognize that traditional market watchers have their own definitions of when we are in a bear versus a bull market, yet several of those traditional analysis techniques (and threshold considerations) come off as inadequate when it comes to analyzing bitcoin price dynamic particulars.
I will note another negative point is that the
bitcoin ETF outflows have been greater than the inflows for the past two weeks, so that has not been a good sign (though we should expect that those kinds of inflow/outflow numbers should largely reflect overall BTC price movements), yet if the BTC price reverses direction (to resume Uppity), then I would imagine that the inflows would resume outpacing the outflows.
On a potentially positive side of things, bitcoin mining difficulties continue to go up and reach all time highs, which largely means that some miners are going to get forced out of business if the BTC price does not go up.. At the same time, mining does not lead price, it's the other way around. Sorry (not sorry) to break the news to you folks who believe that bitcoin price follows things going on in mining, even though surely there could be some short term exceptions including that there does seem to be some mining centralization dynamics (related to almost everyone mining through pools that might not be competing so much between each other) developing in recent times that could playing out as an attack on bitcoin.
https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/difficulty-estimatorhttps://btc.com/stats/diff?_ga=2.166892222.1079250679.1586286038-48233127.1586286038Observing $55,456 and 26% down from ATH made earlier this year. Six months of chop (lower highs, decreasing price, no bounces now) back to the price we were at in February.
To me, that part of your characterization of what is happening with bitcoin prices in the past 6 months or so, does not really seem that bad. Yeah, so within that context, we had gone from $26k/$27k-ish in October 2023 to $73,794 in March 2024, so then we failed to really pierce to the upside through no man's land, yet largely we have been consolidating at the top of such no man's land range for the past 6-ish months, and sure a bit of a downward slope within that range, but not really outrageously down if you were to have had been considering $49,577 as the extreme of our correction
so far (that's right around 33% correction from the top), which truly is not even very unusual in bitcoin's price dynamics history..especially if you are even considering that we had reached an ATH prior to the halvening. which kind of put us a wee bit ahead of schedule in BTC's price performance for this cycle (not withstanding claims that potentially 2021 Uppity portion of the cycle played out as a muted blow-off top).
Sorry for being a bitch guys, obviously selling nothing. I will go down with the ship, relying on four year cycles but seriously WTF.
Last cycle COVID neutered our bull run at 69k. Is it going to be fucked by macro finance this time, the US economy is creaking, recession likely.
Happy to read some HOPIUM boys.
Yeah, you are being a bit of a Debbie downer.. .. which I think is a bit of an overkill, even though surely, none of us know bitcoin's price performance future, but these kinds of trials and tribulations within bitcoin "failing to go up" as fast as we would like really don't even seem that far out of character for bitcoin or even negative - since even if a lot of aspects of macro is really fucked (as you suggested), there are still likely going to be a variety of attempts (by governments and shady financial actors) to save various macro-systems and keep the whole world's precarious financial system going. so even if bitcoin seems to be somewhat dependent on liquidity from already existing macro-systems, it remains difficult to expect bitcoin doing worse than various traditional assets (which one(s) you going to go into in place of BTC? not easy to know.. sure there is no problem with some diversification and owning property and having some nice things.. but still where you going to hold your wealth that is superior to bitcoin.. property and businesses have expenses too).
Any of us longer term bitcoiners should have had always recognized/appreciated that bitcoin has always been something that we should be attempting to prepare ourselves (financially and psychologically) for both UP and down, so yeah, I never really enjoy the downity parts either.. and surely downs can be depressing and probably more depressing the less prepared any of us are for such downs, but what can we further do to prepare ourselves for down when such down is already in the midst of taking place (or maybe when it might even be starting to get to more severe downity levels).. either we had already prepared ourselves while the BTC prices were going up or maybe we just had been buying BTC the whole time (especially if we were either newer to bitcoin or if we had felt that we had not quite gotten enough BTC).. but then once we got to a BTC accumulation state that largely we had already bought enough.. then we are left with a dilemma in regards to if we keep buying or just HODL through the whole mess.
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Pls don't be sorry! I enjoy your thoughts.
There sometimes is an almost religious fanaticism of WO members that attack anyone who wants to discuss potential short/midterm bearishness.
That is because there is no such thing as short-term bearishness. In bitcoin, we are either in a bull market or in a bear market, and bitcoin does not flip flop back and forth between such statuses.
Right now, we seem to be within a correction within a bullmarket, and so LFC's question had to do with at some point these downity market movements could trigger that we end up in a bear market.. which sadly enough happens to be true.. and it seems to me that knowing that we are in a bear market remains a lagging indicator (even though yeah, some folks might kind of get an accurate sense that we are switching in advance).. but surely, it could end up being the case that at some point, even in this correction we go into a bear market (rather than merely passing through a correction within a bullmarket).
If any of us flip flop back and forth in our own descriptions of where we are at, then we are likely going to get some kick back from guys in this thread for those kinds of confusing assessments.
It must look quite stupid to outsiders, and probably doesn't leave a good impression.
Who cares what outsiders think? Some outsiders try to analyze bitcoin within tools that they use to assess various kinds of traditional markets/assets and even conceptualize bitcoin as if it were a mature asset or act like bitcoin is like a stock or some other short-fallings in how they categorize bitcoin, so then they go down their analysis path in confusing ways without recognizing some of the interesting and unique aspects of bitcoin being a new paradigm-shifting asset class that is money, information and a protocol that disrupts a lot of other assets and including various incentives behind money in the sense of bringing back sound money principles, yet bitcoin is also existing side-by-side with traditional financial systems, so there is an ongoing competition and battle between bitcoin and the various other inferior asset classes that are used for storing value (and bitcoin is more efficient at storing value), in which many of us consider bitcoin to be built to withstand various attacks (or even already known problems with macro-financial/monetary systems), even though at the same time, it can feel quite stressful to have high allocations to this volatile and crazy-ass asset (bitcoin)..
Don't we realize that one of the most inevitable aspects of bitcoin is its volatility, especially in the short-term and especially while it is continuing to be exponentially adopted (or is it power curve adopted?), with the complements of Metcalfe principles and network effects (as outlined by Trace Mayer) and at the same time within 4-year cycles that may or may not be able to continue to exist?
Of course it needs more money to pump the prices compared to 2013 or so.
More money is already here... but yeah bitcoin adoption levels may well still be in the ballpark of less than 1% of the world's population - and sure there are some aspects of institutions and governments involvement in bitcoin too, yet I have my doubts if institutions and governments are more involved in bitcoin than the population as a whole.. Maybe all different kinds of entities are at levels of 1%-ish adoption, though it might be interesting to see some data that attempts to quantifiably compare adoption rates of individuals as compared with institutions as compared with governments. Another thing is owning bitcoin directly as compared with third-party custody, which constitutes a claim on bitcoin rather than actual bitcoin, which gets exposure to bitcoin prices, but then takes away a lot of bitcoin's value proposition if individuals are not ready, willing and able to directly custody it.
But nevertheless I have the feeling there is some price suppression going on, since the 2017 top. It might be the derivatives, or at least a combination of things including them. But what do I know. However ... I have the feelingTM that there is quite some selling of non existing coins happening.
I am not going to argue with you about any of these assertions, and we likely know that there are various ways to create more than 21 million BTC.. including the various financial instruments that result in naked shorting, yet it seems that they might end up blowing up when naked shorting... and I don't claim to know the extent to which fractional reserve is happening and also the extent to which those kinds of naked shorting dynamics (or not having the coins that you claim to have) might end up blowing up, either.
Just remember, 94% of all BTC in existence is already mined. Over the next years we will probably see a hard fought distribution with a lot of shenanigans.
I won't argue about any of these speculations, either.
what's your guys prediction on how low we will go until a real reversal?
My worst case is in the lower 40k's
Hopium:
If I check the weekly I see a huge bullflag forming over the last half year. It looks quite convincing
At this particular time, my hypothetical bet of the BTC spot price being able to retain at least 20% above the 200-WMA, which would result in a calculated bottom price of $46.5k-ish is not looking too much in the greater than 50% odds territories.. ... yet I hate calling for (or predicting) down rather than up, even though I still have BTC buy orders down to those lower price points, and at the same time, I don't want any of them to fill.. My next buy orders are at $52.5k and then I have buy order increments of every $1,500 down until $43.5k.. then my buy order increments become every $1,250.. so surely I don't want any of those buy orders to fill, even though there would be 7-ish buy orders filled between $52.5k and $43.5k-ish if BTC prices were to go down in that direction and down to those points.. ..
Nnnnnnnoooooooo...
Darth Vader longer..
Darth Vader shorter.