Bitcoin’s Fourth Annual Loss Looms as Market Fatigue Sets In
Bitcoin stares down its fourth consecutive annual decline—a streak not seen since its early days. Market fatigue isn't just a feeling; it's a weight dragging on momentum.
The Grind
Forget flash crashes. This is a slow bleed—a persistent drain on enthusiasm as traders grapple with extended consolidation. The usual volatility spikes feel muted, replaced by sideways churn that tests even the most hardened HODLers.
Behind the Fatigue
Multiple factors converge. Macro uncertainty keeps institutional capital hesitant. Regulatory gray areas persist globally. And after every previous bull run, the market needs time to digest—to shed speculative excess and rebuild a foundation. That process is rarely exciting.
What's Next?
History shows these phases don't last forever. Consolidation often precedes the next major move. While the current trend tests patience, it also weeds out weak hands—setting a potentially stronger stage for the future. Just ask any traditional finance portfolio manager about their annual returns for a bit of cynical perspective.
The bottom line? Bitcoin's proving its resilience isn't about constant green candles. It's about enduring the grueling stretches in between.
Kala blames it on a lack of follow-through despite positive catalysts
Pratik Kala, a portfolio manager at Apollo Crypto, notes a surprising lack of follow-through across the crypto industry, despite numerous positive catalysts. Bitcoin has decoupled from stocks during this bear market as the S&P 500 rose 16% YTD earlier this month. Tech stocks, which tend to MOVE in sync with Bitcoin, are also performing even better as the token’s value plummets.
The 2014 hack and subsequent collapse of Mt. Gox reportedly exposed huge gaps in crypto’s infrastructure and showed early traders that their funds were still at risk even on centralized platforms. Bitcoin dropped nearly 58% that year.
Meanwhile, a bubble in the so-called initial coin offerings (ICOs) burst four years later after authorities cracked down on crypto, sending Bitcoin and other tokens spiraling downward. The 74% decline of 2018 still holds the record for the most significant drop in BTC prices ever.
The 2022 meltdown was probably the most significant because it led to the closure of several major firms like Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX. It also sparked a broad crackdown by the Biden administration.
Seiler says the current BTC decline is more than a price correction
Maxime Seiler, the chief executive officer at STS Digital, claims that this bear BTC cycle could end up being more of a time correction than a sharp price correction. He believes this is just a long consolidation as BTC trades between $70,000 and $100,000.
However, realized losses for short-term BTC holders are reportedly the highest since the FTX collapse. The brittleness of Bitcoin’s rally was evident on October 10, when nearly $19 billion of Leveraged wagers were wiped out, sending crypto markets into a tailspin that exposed the vulnerabilities piling up beneath the surface. Meanwhile, it looked like nothing could stop Bitcoin’s rise until October’s peak.
On the other hand, several market metrics currently suggest that traders are choosing to remain on the fence for now, or at least until Bitcoin’s volatility reduces. Data retrieved from SoSoValue confirms that investors have withdrawn over $5.2 billion from U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETFs since October 10. Market depth has also dropped about 30% from the year’s high, according to data from researcher Kaiko.
Kala observed that BTC prices have failed to follow through, despite the industry receiving everything it had asked for on the regulatory front, including staking on ETFs. The Apollo Crypto portfolio manager noted that the selling by old whales has dampened the coin’s momentum.
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