The problem with bitcoin is it needs to gain value over time or it becomes irrelevant, who wants to hold your money in something that is sinking? fiat can sink over time in value and remain relevant because it's all relative to the other fiat currencies and wages, and bank interest offsets most if not all of the drop.
So far bitcoin has done that in spades, but if the next halving comes and goes and the price doesn't surpass the last high by a good amount within a year or so it may be abandoned and crash to near nothing. Leaving prior adopters stranded is not going to work.
What asset just goes up forever? If such a thing existed, we could all be rich.
Even if Bitcoin holds the long term uptrend through the next couple halvings, it'll eventually break down. I don't see why entering a bearish supercycle (years or decade-long bear market) would change the bigger picture though. It's the same thing as the 2011 or 2014 bear cycles, just on a larger scale.
I believe that is basically what a lot of people thought about bitcoin when they were getting into this market and that is one of the reasons we keep seeing a lot of whining. It has happened before and I am pretty sure that it will happen again.
Sometimes, I get to wonder if some people actually understand at all how market is fashioned or how it works, and until they come with terms to reality that market will always fluctuate before we will start to get people becoming reasonable with their assumptions or expectations.