What Just Happened? ’Go Back And Study The Last Bull Market’ - History Repeats as Crypto Surges

Deja vu hits hard as digital assets rocket past previous benchmarks—anyone not studying 2021's patterns just got left behind.

Pattern Recognition Pays Off

Traders who mapped previous cycle behaviors cleaned up while newcomers scrambled. The same signals flashed: retail FOMO, institutional accumulation phases, and that classic volatility spike before breakout.

Market Mechanics Unleashed

Liquidity floods back into altcoins as Bitcoin dominance dips—exactly mirroring last cycle's capital rotation playbook. Defi protocols scream back to life while NFT volumes triple in 48 hours.

Regulatory Déjà Vu

Watchdogs scramble to respond to movements they swore they'd contained. Same playbook, different actors—though this time with more sophisticated leverage tools and darker pool trading.

Psychology Wins Again

Greed indexes hit levels not seen since last ATH runs. The same emotional cycles play out: denial, euphoria, and that special blend of amnesia that makes bankers repeat identical mistakes with bigger stacks.

Because nothing teaches like a bull market—except maybe losing everything ignoring its lessons.

Key Takeaways

• The latest market dump has traders caught off guard.
• Crypto analyst and investor Adam Cochran says traders should study the last bull market before using leverage.
• He breaks down his crypto bull market trading strategy to help you on your path.

If you’ve been hanging out on crypto Twitter (Crypto X just doesn’t have the same ring), you’ve probably experienced a slew of puzzled posts, bewildered memes, and frustrated outpourings.

The cries from traders whose crypto bull market trading strategy has come undone are deafening. As well-known crypto analyst and investor Adam Cochran writes:

A Crypto Bull Market Trading Strategy by Adam Cochran

In his thread, Cochran provides a masterclass on how market structure, volatility, and disciplined trading approaches can make the difference between climbing PnL leaderboards and getting wiped out.

His insights aren’t just useful history lessons, but timely reminders for anyone trying to survive (and thrive) in crypto’s latest frothy rally.

As Cochran notes, the closer a market gets to cycle highs, the more drawn-down volatility expands. In other words?

The swings get sharper, the pullbacks faster, and the wipeouts gnarlier, especially for overleveraged traders. So you should prepare your crypto bull market trading strategy accordingly.

The Weekend Trap: How Sundays Play Out

One curious dynamic Cochran breaks down is the way Sundays often become traps for overleveraged traders. As he puts it:

“Sundays are a time when hunters paint the tape up until about 2, squeezing off side, and then puke a large spot into the illiquid market to rinse longs.”

Bigger players will often use thin weekend liquidity to their advantage, as prices are nudged higher in the early part of Sunday. This MOVE forces traders who are positioned the wrong way (“offside”) to close out, adding fuel to the rise.

Once the market is stretched and liquidity is thin, those same players dump large spot sales, flipping the market downward. The result? Overexposed traders are “rinsed out” through sudden, sharp drawdowns and liquidations.

The Rule of Thumb on Adding Leverage

Reflecting on the last cycle, Cochran shares one of his key crypto bull market trading strategy rules: avoid adding leverage too early. His guideline is not to consider leverage until the market has already pulled back by 4–5%, and even then, only in a moderate way.

His caution is born from experience. As markets became overheated, he observed that sharp wicks of over 10% on major coins were not unusual, and they weren’t one-off events. They often played out over several days and tended to retest previous lows before any real recovery took hold.

Ethereum provided one of the clearest examples. In the run-up to the last market peak, ETH fell from $2,600 to $2,000, a full 20% drawdown.

That level didn’t hold cleanly on the first attempt. Instead, it was retested multiple times, each move wiping out traders who had piled in too aggressively on leverage before the eventual breakout.

Cochran explains that after seeing these patterns, he WOULD hold off until the market had declined by at least 15% before considering leverage again once volatility expanded.

It was in being conservative during these wipeouts, rather than chasing every move, that he was able to steadily climb the trading leaderboards on FTX and Binance, where standings often require a seven-to eight-figure profit-and-loss just to qualify.

A Bull Market Playbook

Sitting out during these “wipeouts” helped Cochran climb leaderboards. Professional market players know they’re against retail traders on leverage. That means pros intentionally push markets offside before distributing, relying on retail’s overexposure to clear the field.

Today’s market may be more sophisticated, with smaller percentages in play, but the fundamental tug-of-war between pro traders and greedy leverage junkies remains the same.

Cochran ends with a pragmatic checklist for navigating crypto’s most dangerous (and profitable) phases. So, if you believe we’re entering another true bull market, here’s his distilled crypto bull market trading strategy:

• Hold spot as your core position. Only add mild leverage after 5%+ drawdowns; save bigger leverage for 15–20% pullbacks, and expect retests.
• Never chase green candles.
• Realize gains: bring a set percentage of PnL back to cash after major chart moves, ensuring collateral buffers during wipeouts.
• Don’t touch leverage on small or mid-caps unless you have significant liquid collateral.
• Diversify: avoid concentrating everything in one non-major asset.
• Follow the weekend rule: always keep at least 10% extra cash margin heading into weekends.
• Expect Sunday shenanigans: the opposite of TradFi expectations, or punishing late leverage when open interest is massive.
• Take profits into safety: USDC parked in Aave or similar—money that is deliberately not touched.
• Never go all in.
• Step away when mania peaks:

A Final Word: If 2% Moves Scare You, You’re Not Ready

Perhaps the sharpest takeaway from Cochran’s reflections is also the simplest: If a 2% dip has you asking ‘what just happened?’, you’re probably overexposed and not ready to trade a real crypto bull market just yet.