There had been a few times that I had suggested a willingness to bet that the BTC price won't go below 20% above the 200-WMA prior to the end of 2025, even though now I am starting to get worried about the solidness of my bet, since I was thinking of such bet as a 50/50 bet, which meant that I thought that the odds would be in my favor that such lower than 20% above the 200-WMA would take place.

Right now, as I type this post, the 200-WMA is $38.760, which means that 20% above that would be $46,512.  Even though I would end up losing my hypothetical bet (that no one had been willing to take the other side), I am not sure if getting below that price or even getting below the 200-WMA would constitute that we had entered into a bear market.

My understanding of a bear market is when the odds for going down become greater than the odds for going up, and yeah, I know that traditional market watchers have their own definitions of when we are in a bear versus a bull market, yet several of those traditional analysis techniques come off as inadequate when it comes to analyzing bitcoin price dynamic particulars.

I will note another negative point is that the bitcoin ETF outflows have been greater than the inflows for the past two weeks, so that is not a good sign.. yet if the BTC price reverses, then I would imagine that the inflows would resume outpacing the outflows.

On the positive side, bitcoin mining difficulties continue to go up and reach all time highs, which largely means that some miners are going to get forced out of business if the BTC price does not go up, since mining does not lead price, it's the other way around.  Sorry (not  sorry) to break the news to you folks who believe that bitcoin price follows things going on in mining, even though surely there seem to be some mining centralization dynamics developing in recent times that could playing out as an attack on bitcoin.

https://newhedge.io/terminal/bitcoin/difficulty-estimator

https://btc.com/stats/diff?_ga=2.166892222.1079250679.1586286038-48233127.1586286038


That part of your characterization of what is happening with bitcoin prices does not really seem that bad.  Yeah, we went from $26k/$27k-ish in October 2023 to $73,794 in March 2024, so then we failed to really pierce through no man's land, yet largely we have been consolidating at the top of such range for the past 6-ish months, and sure a bit of a downward slope, but not really outrageously down if you were to have had been considering $49,577 as the extreme of our correction so far (that's right around 33% correction from the top), which truly is not very unusual in bitcoin's price dynamics history..especially if you are even considering that we had reached an ATH prior to the halvening. which kind of put us a wee bit ahead of schedule (not withstanding claims that potentially 2021 was a muted blow-off top).


Yeah, you are being a bit of a Debbie downer.. .. which I think is a bit of an overkill, even though surely, none of us know bitcoin's price performance future, but these kinds of trials and tribulations really don't even seem that far out of character or even negative - since even if a lot of aspects of macro is really fucked, there are still likely going to be a variety of attempts to save various macro-systems and keep it going. so even if bitcoin is somewhat dependent on liquidity from macro-systems, it is difficult to expect bitcoin doing worse than various traditional assets (which one(s) you going to go into in place of BTC?). 

We should have had always known that bitcoin has always been something that we should be attempting to prepare (financially and psychologically) for both UP and down, so yeah, I never really enjoy downs either.. and surely downs can be depressing and probably more depressing the less prepared you are for them, but what can we further do to prepare for down when it is already going down.. either we had already prepared while the BTC price was going up or maybe we just had been buying the whole time.. but then once we already bought enough.. then we are left with a dilemma in regards to if we keep buying or just HODL through it.


That is because there is no such thing as short-term bearishness.  You are either in a bull market or a bear market, and bitcoin does not flip flop back and forth.

Right now, we seem to be within a correction within a bullmarket, and so LFC's question is that at some point, we could end up in a bear market.. which is true.. and it seems to me that knowing that we are in a bear market is a lagging indicator.. but surely, it could end up being the case that we go into a bear market (rather than merely being in a correction within a bullmarket).

If you flip flop back and forth in your own description of where we are at, then you are likely going to get some kick back for those kinds of confusing assessments.


Who cares what outsiders think?  Some outsiders try to analyze bitcoin within traditional tools and even conceptualize bitcoin as a mature asset or act like bitcoin is like a stock or some other short-fallings, so then they go down their analysis path in confusing ways without recognizing some of the interesting and unique aspects of bitcoin being a new asset class that is money, information and a protocol that disrupts a lot of other assets and including various incentives behind money in the sense of bringing back sound money principles, yet within traditional systems, so there is an ongoing competition and battle, in which many of us consider bitcoin to be built to withstand various attacks (or even problems with macro-systems), even though at the same time, it can feel quite stressful to have high allocations to this volatile and crazy-ass assets.. Don't we realize that one of the most inevitable aspects of bitcoin is its volatility, especially in the short-term and especially while it is continuing to be exponentially adopted (or is it power curve adopted?), with the complements of Metcalfe principles and network effects (as outlined by Trace Mayer) and at the same time within 4-year cycles that may or may not be able to continue to exist.


More money is already here... but yeah adoption levels may well still be in the ballpark of less than 1% of the world's population - and sure there are some aspects of institutions and governements involved too, yet I have my doubts if institutions and governments are more involved in bitcoin than the population as a whole.. maybe all aspects are 1-ish adoption, though it might be interesting to see some data that attempts to quantifiably compare adoption rates of individuals as compared with institutions as compared with governments.   Another thing is owning directly as compared with third-party custody.


I am not going to argue with you about any of these assertions, and we likely know that there are various ways to create more than 21 million BTC.. including the various financial instruments that result in naked shorting, yet it seems that they might end up blowing up when naked shorting... and I don't claim to know, either.


I won't argue about any of these speculations, either.


At this particular time, my hypothetical bet of being able to retain at least 20% above the 200-WMA of $46.5k-ish is not looking too much in the greater than 50% odds territories.. ... yet I hate calling for (or predicting) down, even though I have buy orders down there.. I don't want any of them to fill.. my next buy orders are at $52.5k and then increments of every $1,500 down until $43.5k.. then they become increments of every $1,250.. so surely I don't want any of them to fill, even though there would be 7-ish buy orders filled between $52.5k and $43.5k-ish if we were to go there.. ..


Nnnnnnnoooooooo...


Darth Vader longer..


Darth Vader shorter.