We're experiencing the least volatile Bitcoin early (?) bear (?) market ever.

[Ambatman]

Huge investors has helped in cases of massive sell out especially in FUDs
Since they are less likely to be moved by FUD.
Low volatility could mean many are holding and moving to private wallet
Accumulation gradually ongoing.


 

In addition, no major government in the world will allow a decentralized currency to undermine its own centralized system, even if it means banning Bitcoin as a currency, as some countries such as Turkey, Thailand or Vietnam have done.

Hence their aggressive regulations and pushing of KYC
So that transactions can be tracked and taxes could be paid
As long as they are getting something, they would see less reasons to fight it.
Besides the world isn't under one Government
Bitcoin is borderless, and Fiat would still have a market though reduced.

[N.O]

The cryptocurrency market has always been unpredictable in its price rise and fall. In April, there was the last Bitcoin halving and, as a general rule, there should have been a big rise in this market by now, which usually happens 6-8 months after this event. But we could see that each new cycle is not like the previous one.

There are always specific external factors that have a significant impact on this market. It is quite possible that, as happened before, whales are experiencing weak hands, after which the price of Bitcoin will again sharply rise and reach the price of one hundred thousand dollars and above, predicted by some. I hope that we are already on the threshold of this grand event. The coming months should confirm this.

I think BTC is being trading at good price because many thousands of people invested in BTC and bull players got benefit from the market because market touched to the 103k dollar which was record making price because we were habitual to see the price of BTC at 65 to 70k dollars but after we saw huge pump when Donald Trump won the election and now people are greedy but intelligent investor are investing the money on that.Most of the persons who invested in BTC got profit and they are happy and if anyone lose then it is due to his own mistake because he did not research when to buy BTC and he bought at high price and we saw dump in BTC and silly people lose their money.

[d5000]

With 30/60-day volatility index values of around 1.8 %, we continue in a low-volatility bull market. Neither the big "Trump Pumps", nor the "Bart Simpson"-style short term movements we experienced between 95k and 109k were able to change that.

Let's see what happened around 4 years before (taking into account the popular "4 year cycle" theory). I marked both periods in the graph in red.


Source: Bitbo

In January 2021 a relatively low volatility phase with values around 2-3% ended and gave way to a high-volatility period with values of around 4%, something typical for a late bull market. The trend in late January clearly went to the upside and stood high until past mid-year. Strangely, at the top of the 2021 bull volatility lowered again.

Old folks like me will remember that early 2021 was the time when Elon Musk started to massively influence the Bitcoin and Dogecoin prices with his tweets. And later that year, a dump following China's mining ban was followed by the El Salvador pump from September/October on with the cycle top of 69k. The phase between Elon's tweets and the China dump was highly volatile, while the later pump was much smoother (but still much more volatile than now).

It is interesting to discuss what could have changed since back then. While people were following Trump's and Musk's X posts in late 2024 as close as they did in 2021, and in both years the price also seemed to be news-driven, in comparison to 2021 the BTC value barely moved after the 100k pump.

That's a quite unusual situation: Taking into account the "cyclic behavior", Bitcoin should now enter the final bull market stage with high volatility. But that still didn't happen. The market seems to be in a "waiting" phase since December. Perhaps the ETFs and "institutional dip buyers" are reducing Bitcoin's volatility already?

[martinex]

That's a quite unusual situation: Taking into account the "cyclic behavior", Bitcoin should now enter the final bull market stage with high volatility. But that still didn't happen. The market seems to be in a "waiting" phase since December. Perhaps the ETFs and "institutional dip buyers" are reducing Bitcoin's volatility already?

That's right, different eras have different understandings, maybe in 2021 the head of government didn't know anything about crypto, especially BTC, and at this time everyone who joined the winning team already understands the performance of the crypto world rotation very well. So, I think it's natural that the speed of price movements has increased.

[tottong]

That's right, different eras have different understandings, maybe in 2021 the head of government didn't know anything about crypto, especially BTC, and at this time everyone who joined the winning team already understands the performance of the crypto world rotation very well. So, I think it's natural that the speed of price movements has increased.

Every year the adoption of bitcoin will definitely increase because the growth process is getting better so that certain people, groups, institutions see bitcoin as one of the sources that can be used to generate financial stability.
Moreover, the El Salvador effect has shown great success in the bitcoin journey so that these efforts will certainly be considered as steps that any country might need to consider now.
The speed of bitcoin growing so fast is inseparable from the efforts of increasingly widespread adoption so that more trust appears from every investor and certain institutions and I see this indicating a new era in terms of economic growth that is getting better if implemented correctly.

[d5000]

[...] at this time everyone who joined the winning team already understands the performance of the crypto world rotation very well. So, I think it's natural that the speed of price movements has increased.

I think with "speed of price movements" you refer to the anticipation of bull market phases, i.e. that we have seen already a more pronounced bull market phase earlier in time than in 2021?

It's possible to deduce this looking at the charts, of course, but in the case the volatility reduction would be even more remarkable.

Anticipation of bullish movements, or even the conviction that the price would grow further following the bullish long term trend, could be the reason for the relatively mild dumps we have seen in the last intermediate bull market. The most pronounced one in August 2024 only went down less than 30% from the March local top, while in other bull phases we've seen several 30%-50% dumps. "Dip fishers" thus indeed were much more active in this bull market, indicating more trust. In several of the mid-2024 dips ETF investors took the opportunity to buy.

What I'm asking myself is however: could this anticipation also mean that the bull market could end faster and be replaced with a very strong bearish movement?

On the other hand, also the contrary could happen: "dip fishers" could remain active even after many smelled a 4-year cycle top, just because of the general long term bullish trend.

[d5000]

Bumping with data about the last two months.

On a first glance, we could think that volatility has been quite high since the start of the year. First the pump around Trump inauguration, then the dump after the disappointment after the strategic reserve announcement, and finally the tariff dump has actually increased both the 30-day and 60-day volatility significantly. The 30-day volatility (orange line) recorded a new high for this bull market.



But now let's look at the bigger picture (60 day volatility). The thread title still stands -- the only thing is that we don't know currently if we're still in a bull market:


(Source of both images: Bitbo)

I added the 60 day gold volatility and the Brazilian Real, an "average fiat currency", for context. As we can see the volatility of bold gold and the BRL oscillates around a value slightly below the 1% mark. Bitcoin already sometimes reaches this area but most of the time is still significantly higher (1,5-2,5%).

The lines depict the current tendency:

- green: the tendency of the volatility peaks, which often occur at the end of the bull market (ignoring the Covid anomaly).
- blue: a line close to the "mid bull market volatility peaks".

The green line is touching the real volatility surprisingly often, which is a sign that it isn't arbitrary and this sharply sinking value is a real trend.

This could mean that in a few years we can reach the BRL's and gold's volatility. This would make Bitcoin a much safer and less speculative asset.

[d5000]

Aaand another bump. After several new ATHs in the last 4 months since the last post you could expect a volatility increase? Wrong.

Not only is the title still a fact. But the 30-day volatility actually registered a new low not only for 2025, but also for all the period since mid-2023: 0.96%.


Source

The dip under 1% is actually the third lowest volatility since 2017 [1], after July/August 2023 (0.73%, the all time low) and October 2023 (0.91%). And it is much more noteworthy because this new low occurs at an unusually late point of the bull market (almost 3 years after the last notable low in late 2022), when normally wild price swings happen and sentiment shifts between new paradigm dreams and crash fears week after week ...

60-day volatility is also low, at 1.27%. That's just the same value than the 2023 low. It is still above the 2016 low of 1.14%, still the all time low. See below.


[1] Previous to 2017 there were actually 3 other moments where 30 day volatility dipped below 1: in January 2013 and in April and October 2016. This also coincides with the 60-day all time low mentioned above. However, shortly after these dips volatility surged again, it was very likely only a low activity phase on the still immature markets back then. In 2016 for example, MtGox had just closed, and it took some time until other exchanges reached significant activity.

[abaeze]

If we look back a little, it means that in 2017, when the price increased greatly, the volatility was at its highest at 85 and the price also jumped by a huge amount of about 2000%. In 2021, the volatility decreased slightly to 70 and the growth also decreased by 600%. In the same way, the volatility in 2025 has decreased a lot to 40, so the growth has also come relatively slowly, approaching 150%. So it is clear that this time the market is not running as fast as before, but is steadily moving upwards. This indicates that smart investors and long-term Bitcoin holders are controlling the market this time.

[UchihaSarada]

It seems to be true that this bull market and this market cycle has less volatility than other past market cycles and bull markets.

Bitcoin: Bull Market Correction Drawdowns has good information for comparison some market cycles so far with each other and it's helpful to demonstrate this assumption is accurate.

The market cycle is coming to very last months till its ending that is in turn a beginning of a bear market. A biggest possible contributor for this is Bitcoin Spot ETF approvals in the USA in January 2024 and massive buy demands as well as investment capital from Bitcoin Spot ETF entities.

[DeathAngel]

So where are you looking to this bull market topping? I have been thinking for a while we have lower returns as adoption increases & the marketcap is so big. It just takes a lot more money to move the market. Possibly we top around October or November. I do not think the price even gets to 200¥.

[d5000]

If we look back a little, it means that in 2017, when the price increased greatly, the volatility was at its highest at 85 and the price also jumped by a huge amount of about 2000%.

Interesting. I've searched that image on Google to know a bit more about this volatility measure but I've not found it. Is it yearly volatility perhaps? If you have the source I'd be grateful

The Bitbo index takes the standard deviation of the last 30 days and thus is much lower (roughly 1-3% with decreasing trend).

BTW I agree with your conclusion. In addition, there is increased liquidity (measured in purchasing power, not BTC), and weak hands are probably not that dominant as before, as they have been constantly "proven wrong" if they sold at or near the bottom of the cycles.

So where are you looking to this bull market topping?

In the past I looked for extreme bullish moves, like +10-15% in a single day, often followed by more bullish days, and increased volatility near the top. However, in 2021 this already didn't work that good, as we didn't see that much euphoria near the bull market top. The early 2021 "fake top" had more of that actually than the "real top" in late 2021.

A quite good indicator, although "ex post", seems to be an altcoin crash of -10-15% and more in nearly all coins. This imo indicates waning retailer interest. Bitcoin often recovers a bit after that crash, and that's a good time to sell often if you want to ride the waves. However, these crashes do not necessarily indicate an extreme bear market like the one of 2022, it can also be an intermediate pullback of 25-30% like in mid-2024. So while it's not bad to take some profit then, I would keep DCAs running

[WillyAp]

.... it can also be an intermediate pullback of 25-30% like in mid-2024. So while it's not bad to take some profit then, I would keep DCAs running

That is like a hallelujah for any trader worth his(her salt.
Imagine riding a wave on a leveraged future shorting and getting 10% spread?
Currency, there are fluctuations like 3% and that is huge.

[STT]

If you have professional buyers and company buying then there are for sure buying programs in action which is automated to a script.  They buy over time following things like moving averages avoiding spikes deliberately in order to get a good average not engage or stir up a market into higher prices which would work against them.
   So that very slowed type buying will wait weeks and months to take part, buying most in lower moments such as bad news causing weakness.

   Buffet famously did this with some long term accumulation in buying up a large section of  Coke shares, he knew people would force the price higher copying his actions so he avoided attention for a long time before anyone noticed and he has never sold from the 1980's till now.  He has a free coke machine in his office restocked by courtesy of the company he owns

The thread title still stands -- the only thing is that we don't know currently if we're still in a bull market:

Good data but it is a bull market.  Price action has tapered off, Im not too surprised volatility is showing lower.  I got no real doubts BTC is bullish, doesnt matter if the gate is locked and the BTC price action is fenced in.   In a good bull fight the bull can clear its confinement, the market grip is weaker then the beast & I see no reason why not.

[justdimin]

I've searched that image on Google to know a bit more about this volatility measure but I've not found it. Is it yearly volatility perhaps? If you have the source I'd be grateful

The Bitbo index takes the standard deviation of the last 30 days and thus is much lower (roughly 1-3% with decreasing trend).

BTW I agree with your conclusion. In addition, there is increased liquidity (measured in purchasing power, not BTC), and weak hands are probably not that dominant as before, as they have been constantly "proven wrong" if they sold at or near the bottom of the cycles.

There is one more thing you need to consider. The higher we go, the lesser the volatility could happen. So going from 1 dollar to 2 dollars was easy because it required maybe ten grand? Or even if a million dollars, that's still low. Compared to going from 100k to 200k, which would require hundreds of billions of dollars. Same 100% increase, and yet it requires so much more money going into bitcoin for it to happen.

This means volatility will keep on dropping, it won't survive that long. We have to realize if we want volatility, we have to prefer altcoins because that can actually give you some volatility, those are still low in numbers and marketcap so a few million dollars going into it could still double many of the altcoins.

[dezoel]

If you have professional buyers and company buying then there are for sure buying programs in action which is automated to a script.  They buy over time following things like moving averages avoiding spikes deliberately in order to get a good average not engage or stir up a market into higher prices which would work against them.
   So that very slowed type buying will wait weeks and months to take part, buying most in lower moments such as bad news causing weakness.

   Buffet famously did this with some long term accumulation in buying up a large section of  Coke shares, he knew people would force the price higher copying his actions so he avoided attention for a long time before anyone noticed and he has never sold from the 1980's till now.  He has a free coke machine in his office restocked by courtesy of the company he owns

Botting is risky in this market, the market is too volatile for bots to work properly, it does better in a steady market. While even the "steady" market of bitcoin makes moves, it's usually under 5%, which means that it moves not that big, and you can buy and sell within that small difference. But, when price moves from 120k+ levels, to 112k levels, that wasn't a good time, now it's recovering, but it's still risky.

Long story short, we need to make sure that it takes a while for this to settle down and use bots. The coca cola deal is a fun one, he did the same thing with Geico as well, the insurance company, he bought up silently, until it became obvious to everyone and he made a lot of money from holding the same company.

[Mrbluntzy]

Some bitcoinist on youtube and twitter are stating that the market will become more volatile during the month of the last bullish move and what's going to cause the spike is because of FOMO, since the market volatility will be high, so many will have the FOMO and buy as the price continues to run up to the peak where the move is going to be exhausted, that's going to be in the last quarter of 2025. For people that have the funds to grab more coins, this is even the time to do so since the upcoming spike could be the lastlast and then bear market.

[Smartvirus]

The current value is at 1,7 for the 30-day volatility and 1,78 for the 60-day volatility. And the record low still is from 2023, when the 30-day value fell to 0,77, similar to the value of gold.

Bull markets and early bear markets were very volatile in the past due to FOMO and panic phases. The only bull market when similar values were achieved was the late crypto winter 2015/2016, when prices started to rise again. But as you can see in the graph, the volatility back then spiked regularly to 4 or even 5%. This is not the case in 2024 anymore, we only saw briefly 3% in the 30-day volatility in August, after the dip down into the 50k area.

This has a lot to do with the current price of Bitcoin. Back then in 2015/2016, Bitcoin was well around an affordable range for a whole Bitcoin and as such, investors weren’t too skeptical to think that they were risking more for an over priced asset. According to Bitbo charts, Bitcoin in 2015 started off with a price ranged $314.95k, had its highest price for at $463.87k and its lowest price at $165.07k while ending the year well above $430.08k. Now this was a price mark that investors could easily jump at as opposed to the value we have it in today which is within the $100k - 125k range.
Despite the progress in adoption, it still raises some skepticism in the minds of investors.

[d5000]

There is one more thing you need to consider. The higher we go, the lesser the volatility could happen. So going from 1 dollar to 2 dollars was easy because it required maybe ten grand? Or even if a million dollars, that's still low. Compared to going from 100k to 200k, which would require hundreds of billions of dollars. Same 100% increase, and yet it requires so much more money going into bitcoin for it to happen.

This is true to some extent, but the relationship is less linear between "the money needed to move the price" and the current market cap. Everything depends on liquidity: the more liquid the markets are, the fuller are the order books, and the more money is needed to move the price.

Let's have an example. We have a spot price of $99,999 and an order book with the following sell orders: 1 BTC on $100,000 , 2 BTC on $101,000 (+1%), 3 BTC on $105,000 (+5%).

In another situation in the future, we have a spot price of $999,999 and sell orders: 0.02 BTC on 1,000,000, 0.03 on 1,010,000 (+1%) and 0.05 on 1,050,000 (+5%).

In this situation, it takes more US$ to move the price from 99,999$ to 105,000$ than from 999,999$ to 1,050,000. We need 6 BTC in total (around 600,000$) to move the price 5% in the first case, but only 0,1 BTC (100,000$) in the second case.

It is likely that the order books are "thicker" and the liquidity higher when the price is higher, but it is not guaranteed. In the altcoin world for example you have very liquid coins (which tend to be more stable) with a relatively low market cap and others with less liquidity, a higher market cap, and probability of stronger price swings. I can search for concrete examples if someone is interested.

Some bitcoinist on youtube and twitter are stating that the market will become more volatile during the month of the last bullish move and what's going to cause the spike is because of FOMO, since the market volatility will be high, so many will have the FOMO and buy as the price continues to run up to the peak where the move is going to be exhausted, that's going to be in the last quarter of 2025.

Indeed it is possible that we see a significantly more volatile phase near the end of the bull market (if we're still in a bull market ). But the charts above show that volatility in the early and mid bull markets was also much lower this time than in previous bull markets, so imo it's unlikely that the volatility peak will be higher than in 2021 or 2017.

[WillyAp]

But the charts above show that volatility  ....

Charts are for dreamers.
They dream curves as high as posible to make them millionaire (in FIAT) or shorts to crate a similar wealth.