Bitcoin Forum

I would like to follow the market trends with great interest and compare the current market price movements after the end of 2021 with previous bearish trends such as the 2018 bear market. I think the cryptocurrency bearish trend may have changed the pattern and took another dimension. . If you've been following the market trends, you've probably noticed that what's happening in the market right now is different from the 2018 downtrend, but yet another sign of a bearish move. What is your opinion

I think it's the same but the price is different as you can see right now, the price was cut more than half from its ATH last year. It was the same from last 2018 right?
Just don't expect it to go down to less than $10,000 again because it won't gonna happen after bitcoin halving. This is its new bearish market and yes! an opportunity for you to buy if you planned to hold for so long or just sold it just after another bitcoin halving like we had last time.

Many people feel that the bear market cycle is repeating the same as in the past. There is a clear difference that the market in 2018 was not as trending as it is now, very few ecosystems are almost exclusively focused on ETH. The majority of investors are individuals.
The current market has developed more and entered a completely new turning point. Bitcoin is becoming more and more known and widely accepted, the number of investors multiplying many times, including corporations, institutions and even countries. Ecosystems are increasing and there is strong competition. So it's hard to say that a bear market until 2018 is coming.

Current and previous Bitcoin pumps were different and therefore we have different types of correction.
Previously we had lots of ICOs and many of them were scams. Therefore we had more legal uncertainty and more risks. But this time when the hype is around NFT we already got a legal basis for institutional investors and strong media support from established media shilling their NFTs.

The only worthy comparison is to check whether we had a larger bubble in 2018 (we probably did) so it could help us to predict the depth of current bear run.

I do agree with you here. If you look at the pattern of rise to its ATH in 2017 and drop, it almost seems like the same only that we do understand that the price of BTC ATH in 2017 is different from the last 2021 ATH
https://i.imgur.com/uJQMgvH.jpg
Now we could say we have a lot more BTC awareness and adoption now so this might determine the difference in the duration this bear market might drag out instead of the maybe 4-year circle of the past.

I've been saying this for almost 4 months now that it makes no sense whatsoever to only compare the bitcoin bear market in 2018 without first comparing the bull market from 2014 to 2017. In fact this is what my current avatar is showing too.

With a quick look, you can clearly see that the bull market (from 2019 to 2022) is not only tiny in comparison to previous one but it appears that it may be incomplete.
The only thing we can discuss is when this cycle will be completed (reach bubble at $400k) otherwise there is no reason for seeing the same market crash as 2018 (ie. the bear market).

The blue line in the chart below shows the previous bull run and its ATH and the red line shows the current bull run and its ATH. It is obvious how tiny that is!

https://i.imgur.com/tXgWq6h.jpg

Expect for this market to have a bearish or bullish state of scenario which is very common for a market to have because to mind off about reality on which we cant stay up on a single path because it cant be called a

market on the first place if we do have that kind of behavior which it is a wrong belief or mindset to have.Speaking with past patterns then theres no such thing because one of the factors that it could really differ
is on the level of adoption and recognition.There might be some similar patterns or movements back in the past comparing it to now but it wont give 100% assurance that it would move on the same behavior.

Why not, the bear and bull is the way market works. When it comes to the crypto space its just best example of unstable and volatile market ever. So not surprised at all. In fact we should take opportunity of this and create plans for the execution of our trading. When we know its in bear trend then we must be confident enough to see the bull trend popping its doors in the future. So trade accordingly, invest accordingly.  :D

Maybe what you say is true if this year is indeed the year of the bear in the crypto market, even now the crypto market is still very low.
 I don't know how long this journey will continue and maybe the end of this year the crypto market will experience another bull run like last year.

If you had calculated the market correctly, you may found that. The market trend and chart was changed entirely. So don't do trade based on the current chart.The cause for bear market now is due to war.So we can't able to see the pump in the market for the long run.When the war end, their will back to pump as like old price. Before that, you expected the pump. Your trading priciples should be changed. Now it's best time to inverse in the crypto and no doubt in that.

It absolutely looks different because it depends also on how the people responded to the market and also, the demand is quite high compared in previous years.

Like comparing the bear cycle of the market, yes it happens after the Bullrun but that seems it was missing till now. I'm not sure if that be considered as a bear market during the time that the price of Bitcoin drop below $30k coz that still high (for me). If yes, that was just a shot-time, unlike the last bear season where it takes 2 years.

https://i.imgur.com/o5eXq0b.png
https://dailyhodl.com/2022/02/23/crypto-analyst-who-nailed-2018-bear-market-bottom-says-bitcoin-btc-trading-below-30000-now-inevitable/

I've read some analysis that said that what if the last year was already that change OP is talking about? There was a point last year when bitcoin was under $30k.
That's probably the lowest that we've seen during this bull run and we haven't been there again. This time, it's trying to get up and was close to $30k but didn't hit that.
It's very likely that trends have changed and history won't be the same anymore, it's just about the possibility.

Why are we still talking about the crypto cycles and bullruns like it is ever going to be the same again? Bitcoin is no longer a novelty and an esoteric commodity that everyone will jump onto as soon as they hear about it on their christmas dinners. Almost everyone in the world has their mind made-up about Bitcoin now. There are no more noobs rushing in, no more "institutions" trying to FOMO in. The market is not mature enough to behave on fundamentals rather than pumpamentals.

This means that the price of Bitcoin will depend on the stance of governments and regulators worldwide. From the rejections that Bitcoin ETF's keep getting from SEC(Due to Tether), there isn't much of a possibility of price movement. If and when an approval comes, it'll definitely be a moment of "Selling the news". By that logic, now would be the time to "buy the rumor".

There's no way we can tell where the current market is going, but we have our own prediction and personally, I don't think we will ever experience the same 2018 bear market, where bitcoin and most altcoins have really dropped significantly.

Let's based on bitcoin only, last 2017 bull run, bitcoin almost hit $20k and it dropped at sub $3k, that's 85% dropped from its ATH, so let's say it will be the same trend, our ATH now is $67k, so if it will dropped by 85%, that means we will be dumping to at least $10k.

In my opinion, crypto has an unpredictable movement. We can't predict it. We are in crypto with hope, and our hope is everything. Those who lived with hope after the 2018 down trend, if they are still living with the hope that bitcoin's unpredictably unpredictable movement genre. Then obviously, they already got their answer. And I hope you understand what I want to mean. And as I already mentioned, the crypto price is unpredictable, so as normal users, we are not able to say with certainty what movement is going to happen next. Is it a bearish season coming or a bull season coming? Well, expert traders, technical analysts, or market researchers might be able to know, but it's really impossible for us. Thank you.

The things you said are true but the market has grown than it was 4 years ago, i am also expecting a major correction but there are multiple factors that are in play we did not have in the past, including institutional investors who is holding billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies and if anyone of these institutional investors think about booking their profit then we will see the market going for a major correction, till now they are selling off strategically rather than dumping everything and then another factor is the global financial sector where everyone is expecting major inflation and i am curious what the investors will do during these situation, where they will go after gold or they will set a portion for the cryptocurrency market as well during those situations.

Everything would be much different and here's the factor that could really influenced it out.

-Rate of Adoption
-Rate of recognition/legalization
-Rate of peoples awareness around

or simply in talks with the demand.We cant just ignore out that as years pass by then it would really be on different levels.

Not really.
First of all we had a dead cat bounce in 2018, meaning that price went from around 20k down to 10k (50%) and in about 2 weeks went up again to 17k which was very close to the ATH. Then it dropped again to a strong support of 6kUSD (30% of the ATH)

Now we had a drop from 70k back to 40k, no bounce and another drop to 32k and now we're stuck in this 35-45k (around 40% down from ATH) range for 3 months.

This doesn't look similar to 2018, but I also think it doesn't have to. Who says bull-bear cycles have to look the same every time. If you look at the details they never are.
In 2017 we went up 10x from the previous ATH. In 2017 we only went up 3.5x. A bull cycle so much weaker from the last one is expected to produce a weaker bear market.


Why would it go to 10k? You're trying to look for similarities between previous markets, so be consistent. After reaching a new ATH in a cycle, bitcoin hasn't ever retraced below the ATH of a previous cycle.
When we went from 10k to 20k for the first time, the next bear market did not go back below 1k. After breaking 20k for the second time the lowest that I'd expect it to fall from the ATH of 70k is 20k with a possible wick below. Daily candle wicks are possible to go lower than the fair price because of low liquidity on exchanges.
10k is out of the question unless we get a black swan event like a nuclear catastrophe or a world war.

I have to agree with you here. With those factors that you laid out, the market movement may be different this time.
We can't base the market performance to a specific year because the situation is already different.
The rate of adoption alone can give a deviation to what may happen to the market.
Aside from that, people across the globe are starting to recognize the benefits of crypto during crisis - pandemic, war.
So in this regard, we may see further boost in crypto adoption, which eventually can positively affect the market.

Well I perfectly agree with you, there is no repeat on itself, the price will move based on fundamental effect and sometimes could lead into FUD news that makes everyone panic and sell but of course, that is for newcomers only but for those who already know how bitcoin work they know how to hold while at the bearish trend. There is no specific time when it will move it always matter on the demand and supply that may rely on what news is around.
However, last year we have a twice ATH that happened, I don't think if that is happen before on the market price history.

It seems like we're experiencing what is called lenthning cycle this time around, I don't think that this Bear market and the previous one are going to be same thing , When you take a good look at the lager time frame like weekly time frame ,it seem there is a kind of consolidation going on between the upper channel and the lower channel of the weekly time frame, Thus making it take a longer time this period than the previous and coupled with the crisis and geopolitical tensions around the world.

As much as we want to have a basis of where to put our money to, it is not very smart to compare it with previous years as the condition of the market is different now. We can't follow the history as the contributing factors are already different. So for me, it is truly hard to say we will have a repeat of what's happened before because there are more stakeholders now. I don't think it is appropriate to make a basis from previous years if it is not applicable anymore with the current scenario.

I wouldn't compare the two because there's at least as many differences as similarities.
You have different volumes, cycle time, percentage gain, number of tops with the second ATH being only a few percent higher than the last which never happened before. Then you have a drop that wasn't really steep actually it was the same drop as we had in 2021 after the first ATH. This is also the first time that bitcoin gained a high, corrected and went to a new high followed with almost the same correction. I feel like we are still in a bull market just a corrective phase of it.

I want to agree with you on that. I think price didn't get to its intended crescendo before plummeting in 2021. This is why I believe strongly that the bears will only linger this first quarters of this year and be done away with once the market goes into the second quarters. Bitcoin still has some unexhausted steam that can get it fired up again easily. Going forward, I don't think Bitcoin will ever encounter such brutal fall as it did in 2018 because of a lot of institutional monies that have sunk into its investment now. In 2017/2018, it was more of retail investors. They panicked easily because they were in it for short term gains. Now that we've institutions on a long term investment, it's going to be hard to witness such market dump.

I don't understand whether you are saying we are having a similar bear market of 2018 or this time is different?
As I understand time has changed a lot from 2017/18 till now. Back in the old days, bitcoin was not as popular as it is currently adopted by governments and institutions. Due to the increasing demand and lots of use cases, I think we may not have a multi year bitcoin bear market and at the same time bitcoin may not dump -80%+ from all time high.

The market changes a lot after the last ATH and it was growing more. So if we compare the past in today's situation, it certainly has a huge difference and fewer similarities.
* trading volume - that absolutely improving and this because many had known already about trading.
* the number of traders are growing pushing the price move high, not going down.
* majority had able to control themselves and even hold during the dip. A change in minds that we mostly notice this time, we never see panic selling like what we saw in the past.

Corrections can be happening but not similar to the past where the price badly turn difficult and hard down.

Bitcoin always breaks the expectation of everybody. As if we're already expecting a bear market to come, look, a bullish turn has come to our side again. No matter how we look at the cycle, there's always the turning point and that will be the unknown price increase/decrease that we usually get to see for bitcoin.
At most times, it's better to just go with every possibility and don't be too confident with those speculations that we see mostly.

Yes the market has matured these days because the number of investors and traders have grown a lot.
Also, we don't generally have the same kind of people so may be new investors and traders have joined in this time causing the bear to be less effective when compared to previous bear trend.
Also, I particularly don't think that the bear trend has started quite yet. In fact we are seeing signs of slow recovery these days.
If things go well we might get back to the 60s soon  :)

I think it's tough to compare this time's pattern with the previous bull-bear run scenario, primarily because earlier we just saw one top and after that top bitcoin fell quite hard took a lot of time to recover back from that position, forget about touching the all-time high again it didn't even go in that 10% range around the All-time high. While this time even after seeing a complete dump towards 28000$ we saw market recovering back breaking the all time high once again and then dumping once again into the 33k Range. This is absolutely different pattern from what happened in the previous downtrend, therefore it's difficult to predict the upcoming move, you never know whether btc will dump first and then go onto a new bull run or first break the all time high once again and go into the bearish phase.

All I have followed is that bitcoin will be down by the start of any new year, then it will behave based on the world factors, whats happening around etc. In between the quarters there might be some whales playing their chase games so that they can bag it for the year end trivia. If you notice carefully then by the time of September to October things start to kick off with little hunches in the trading pattern. However, this is the start where you should not be selling but focusing on the holding methodology. But by this time you have already missed the point to enter into the market. So those who already bought at the start of year, for example take current bearish market then you are lucky enough to make more than 40-60% by the year end without any hesitation. It's Christmas and new year eve timings, the period where uncertain hikes can occur.  :)

Indeed, current bear market isn't same as previous one as more institutional investors are in this market. Not only that, more users are becoming mature enough to catch with the ongoing trends/hype as well as prevent losses with own research. However upcoming bear or bull market won't be same like previous seasons because old users and institutional would only get profits and none will be on losses which isn't quite possible. So we're having both down and up trends in current market, IMHO.

Well there is belief that maybe Bitcoin will have 2 super cycles so we might not see a bear market similar to 2018. Or if we are indeed in the bear market, the price will not go down hard as the last time.

So there's are a lot of factors to look at the current trend, as the data is fairly young, we can't say that we will have the same down turn as 2018 or we will have a new cycle because the so called narrative has changed, i.e. Government and countries investing on it, whales continue to buy, even huge projects are willing to invest billions upon billions on the market.

Probably this bear market, until now of course, has been the best one since I don't feel we suffered like in 2018. Probably also because some big investors bought bitcoin when it was around $30k, and they kept buying every time we went down to that level. Seeing that bitcoin is valued at $44k despite the Chinise ban, the regulations, a war... It's impressive!

I can say that when we were going to compare the last 2018 bear market, today's bear market was so different from that because the market is not totally saturated, it maybe now lower than the highest All time high that it hits but compared to the last bear market it is far different. I can say that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies today are stronger than before that any bad comments, banned of major countries cannot determined how much will be the last price position of bitcoin.

Oh it definitely has changed. We also saw some changes between the 2018 cycle and the previos one. Now, even though we are able to predict that a smilar cycle will happen, what we can't predict is how the cycle will behave and what characteristics it will have. The crypto landscape has changed drastically over the span of a couple of years and that is definatelly adding a bunch to the equasion.

I think it refers to the times when the BTC was in a bearish trend, it must be recognized that there was an accumulation stage from 2014 to 2017, then the bullish trend came and later that is when we reached the first bearish trend, and then the stage was introduced of accumulation, and it was presumed that it was going to enter a bullish trend because it reached the new ATH, for some we are currently in a bearish trend, but looking at it from another point of view, I think that for me we are in a stage of re-accumulation, that is why In my opinion, the bearish trend stage has not arrived and is far away.

It is just a matter of price change but as per to see with the market, still in the same pattern, up and down, bullish and bearish, and vice versa. So, people will think that history repeats itself because they know that once the market is in the correction, people are buying then, and when it gets back to bullish, people are selling. Obviously, we are just following the same trend as before, we had never seen new changes, it is only the price went high and new ATH.

For me, the bear market now (if yes) or in the future is different. The bear market last 2018 is totally different as we can consider a lot of things, first is the volume, trading volume before is really low, second is the popularity of cryptocurrency market, there are few people know about cryptocurrency and day by day there are new people are being introduced with cryptocurrency and it will start a lot of people will use crypto, transactions are increasing.