Long term has not been bearish for a very long time,,, so it does strike a sense of fear that winter is coming, and I guess that is what people are afraid of, hence patient buying in expecting even lower prices. The good thing I feel that if we do go below $40000 it will trigger more dip buying so we should see accumulation getting serious. This is all a waiting game right now.
I do not think that it has been bearish at all. What people think (and probably you too) that price has been lower than ATH so far and that is why you think it is bearish. It doesn't need to be 60k+ to not consider it bearish, you could consider the current price not bearish as well. Bearish means price must be dropping, have you seen price drop too much recently?Aside from the latest 48k to 40k drop, which is just correcting we had, price has been in the 40k range for almost 4 months now, that should be good enough reason to say that it hasn't been dropping too much, and if it is not dropping too much then it is not bearish neither. It is certainly not bullish, that is for sure, but not bearish neither.
Please re-read what I said
we both agree it has not been bearish at all, that is what I started by saying actually 
What I said was BECAUSE it has not been bearish for a long time, there is a sense of fear that it is around the corner,,, simply because it is highly unusual for Bitcoin to be in bullish sentiment for so long. It is now way more over a year since the rally began.
For me to remain bullish it is less about dropping now but to maintain 40k in this month which already failed. Now we wait.