The evidence is conclusive, are we entering the Bear Market?

Author: The Defi Report

Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily Golem

Editor's note: On March 12, 2025, a clear day, nothing happened in the crypto market. The elderly who experienced the big crash in the coin circle on March 12, 2020, will recall the days dominated by 'fear' every year and hope that this day can pass peacefully. However, calmness may not necessarily be a good thing. Looking at the longer timeline, despite the frequent verbal support from the Trump administration for the crypto industry, Bitcoin fell by 17.67% in February, reaching a low of $78,258. As we enter March, the situation has not improved, with Bitcoin still hovering around $80,000.

So, the terrifying thought is whether January 2025 will be the peak of this bull market? Will the next year welcome us with endless bearishness? Despite many positive remarks in the market, researchers from The Defi Report suggest that the next 9-12 months will be a bear market. Odaily Star Daily has compiled their analysis of the market below. Take care~

Market Review: How Did We Get Here?

Before understanding the current on-chain data, first conduct a qualitative analysis of the current cryptocurrency cycle.

Bull market early stage: January 2023 to October 2023

This is probably the period from January 2023 to October 2023, the period after the market bottomed out after the FTX crash, the market has become very quiet (low trading volume, the silence of crypto Twitter), but the market has actually started to rise.

During this period, BTC rose from about $16500 to $33000. However, no one called this a bull market, and most people are still in a wait-and-see mode during the "early bull market" period.

Wealth Creation Phase: November 2023 to March 2024

This is probably the period from November 2023 to March 2024.

At this point, we saw some big moves and some exaggerated wealth creation. SOL rose from $20 to $200, Jito's airdrop (Dec 23) created huge wealth effects in Solana, and revalued the value of Solana DeFi (Pyth, Marinade, Raydium, Orca, etc.). The venture capital market reached its peak frenzy during this period (which is very typical).

BTC rose from $33,000 to $72,000; ETH rose from $1,500 to $3,600; Bonk's market value rose from $90 million to $2.4 billion (26 times); WIF's market value rose from $60 million to $4.5 billion (75 times). The seeds of a larger 'Meme Season' have been sown at this stage.

But during this time, the market is still quite 'quiet', and your friends outside the circle may not have asked you about cryptocurrencies yet.

Wealth distribution phase: March 2024 to January 2025

This is probably from March 2024 to January 2025.

This is the peak of attention in the crypto market, where we see emotions like 'WAGMI', rapid rotation, new metadata (which quickly disappears), and blind adventurous actions for returns. Celebrities and other 'crypto transient' often enter during this period, and crazy headlines like 'Tesla buys BTC' or 'Bitcoin strategic reserves' often appear during the wealth distribution phase.

New investors are entering the market on the back of these headlines, but they don't realize they are already late. This is also the second wave of the 'Meme Season', which then evolved into the 'AI Agent Season'. During this period, the market ignored many obviously problematic behaviors, and no one was willing to speak out loudly because people were making money, and this has brought us to the current 'hell'.

Wealth Destruction Phase: January 2025 to present

We believe that we have entered this period after Trump took office. This is the period after the market has peaked, and the bullish catalysts have now become a thing of the past. Seemingly positive news has encountered bearish price action.

Under the current system, administrative actions related to 'strategic Bitcoin reserves' have not actually driven the market up - this is an important signal. During this period, market reversals often encounter key resistance and gradually fade (we saw this after Trump's tweet about cryptocurrency reserves last week).

Some other signals that can be seen during the wealth destruction phase:

Liquidation and 'panic' can disrupt the market, but have not fully sobered the market. We see this in the panic and tariff uncertainty of DeepSeek AI.

Investors hold on to the 'hope'. We see a lot of discussions today about the decline of the US dollar and the increase in global M2 (more on this later).

More 'scammers' enter the market. More and more people send private messages to crypto people, asking to 'check out their projects'; more advertising capital flows everywhere, funds from well-funded projects are spent at will; more PvP/competition/internal strife, and a generally 'dirtier' atmosphere from the industry; during the 'wealth destruction' period, people start to blame the bad guys.

During this period, the 'corpses' in the market also began to emerge - usually after the liquidation. The last cycle began with Terra Luna, which led to the bankruptcy of Three Arrows Capital, triggered the bankruptcies of BlockFi, Celsius, FTX, etc., and ultimately led to the demise of Genesis and the sale of CoinDesk.

Currently we have not seen any 'corpse', but this cycle should be less - just because there are fewer CeFi companies. Time will tell, the later the fuse arrives, the higher the low point we will set when we officially hit bottom.

Where might the fuse come from? No one knows, but common culprits include:

Exchange. Pay close attention to hidden leverage and/or potential fraudulent activities in some "B-grade and C-grade" exchanges.

Stablecoins. Focus on Ethena/USDe - with a stablecoin value circulating close to 55 billion US dollars. Ethena maintains its peg and earns profits from cash and arbitrage trading (holding spot assets, shorting futures) - this was the main source of leverage in the last cycle (via Greyscale). Ethena's reliance on centralized exchanges adds additional counterparty risk. In addition, MakerDAO also invests part of its reserves in USDe, bringing additional cascading risks to DeFi.

Protocol. Note potential hacker attacks and liquidation cascades caused by encrypted collateral, such as Aave, which still has over $110 billion in active loans (below the peak of $150 billion).

Strategy. They have done a good job in prudently managing debt, as most of it is long-term unsecured debt or convertible debt (BTC holdings do not have additional margin), and they were able to withstand a 75% drop in BTC in the last cycle. However, a significant drop in BTC price may bring pressure to Saylor, forcing him to sell a large amount of BTC at the worst time.

The best time to re-enter the market is when the wealth destruction phase ends, and we believe this has not yet arrived.

Some bearish data that you cannot avoid

DEX trading volume

After Trump launched the Meme coin, the Solana DEX trading volume dropped by 80%, and at the same time, the number of independent traders decreased by more than 50%. This sends us a signal that the market frenzy is starting to weaken.

Token issuance

The token circulation on Solana has decreased by 72% from its peak. Nevertheless, the chain still creates over 20,000 tokens per day.

Bitcoin long-term holder MVRV ratio

Data: Glassnode

Long-term holders MVRV (Bitcoin's 'smart money') peaked at 4.4 in December. This is 35% of the peak value of 12.5 in 2021 cycle and also 35% of the peak value in the 2017 cycle. Bitcoin rose by about 80 times from the trough to the peak in the 2017 cycle, by about 20 times in the 2021 cycle, and by about 6.6 times in the current cycle.

The actual price of Bitcoin (representing the average cost basis of all circulating Bitcoins) reached a peak of $5,403 during the 2017 cycle, 15.1 times higher than the peak of the 2013 cycle. It reached $24,530 during the 2021 cycle, which is 4.5 times higher than the peak of the 2017 cycle. Today, the actual price is $43,240, which is 1.7 times the peak of the 2017 cycle.

Abandon the illusion, this cycle has ended

By analyzing the above data, we can observe the symmetry of the peak declining during the cycle. These data clearly tell us that the law of diminishing returns is real. With Bitcoin now being a 1.7 trillion dollar asset, no matter how optimistic the headlines are, investors should not expect to see sustainable parabolic trends like in the past, as it would require too much capital inflow at this point.

When BTC loses momentum, the rest of the market loses everything.

The enthusiasm for Solana is waning. We are paying attention to this because we are concerned that Solana's 'return to the East' story is built on the 'House of Cards' considering that 61% of DEX trading volume so far this year involves Meme coins. In addition, less than 1% of Solana users have contributed more than 95% of the gas fees in the past 30 days, which is worrying because it highlights that a small number of Solana users (whales) are plundering everyone else (trading Meme coins). Therefore, if the 'Pioneers' are tired of losing money and take a break (which we believe they will), we may see a rapid deterioration in Solana's fundamentals.

BTC long-term holders have already profited twice in the past year. Their actual cost is currently about $25000. At the same time, short-term holders who bought at the highest price are currently at a loss (with an average cost basis of $92000). We believe that as BTC reaches a peak of $109000, this group may continue to sell at lower highs.

Data: Glassnode

When these data are presented, it is undeniable that the 'typical' cycle has ended, and denying this is denying reality. Of course, there is no 'conclusion' here. We believe that the best way to handle this information is to accept reality + assign a probability to the peak of the cycle, which we believe is obviously higher than 50%.

Can the bullish view still hold up?

The bearish market argument continues to face significant resistance in the market, and the bulls have not quietly laid down their weapons. In this section, we will introduce the unsustainable 'bullish market view'.

Global M2 / liquidity

Data: Bitcoin Counter Flow

The green box on the right shows that as the global M2 begins to rise, BTC is falling. Some people see this as a bullish signal, citing the correlation between M2 and BTC, as well as the generally lagging performance of BTC (2 to 3 months). However, the green box on the left shows the same dynamics at the end of the previous cycle: M2 rose while BTC fell. In fact, M2 did not peak until early April 2022, 5 months later than BTC's peak.

Since mid-January, global M2 has increased by 1.87% as central banks around the world have shifted from tightening to easing, which is favorable for liquidity conditions. However, we should also ask the following question:

What is driving the growth of M2? We believe it is mainly coming from the decline of the US dollar (down 4% since February 28) - in terms of the US dollar, this means more foreign currency. This is a boost for global M2, and in addition, the recent exhaustion of reverse repurchase tools + China's policy relaxation to boost the economy is also one of the reasons.

Will M2 continue to rise? As investors transfer funds overseas, the US dollar will continue to decline, but not as sharply as in the past few weeks. We believe that China's policies will continue to slow down the depreciation of the US dollar. However, the Federal Reserve may not adopt an easing policy in the short term as they have stated that reserves are still "adequate".

How does this compare to last year's liquidity conditions? Compared to last year, the current liquidity situation should be seen as unfavorable. Remember, this is more about the rate of change rather than nominal growth. We strongly believe that the Fed and the Treasury 'stimulated' the market last year to reelect Biden/Harris. This was achieved through 'shadow liquidity' - or in the words of Michael Howell of Cross Border Capital, 'non-QE, QE' and 'non-YCC, YCC'. The chart below shows the impact of canceling these policies on the rate of change under the new Trump administration.

Data: Cross Border Capital

It is estimated that the above 'secret stimulus' injected $57 trillion into the U.S. market in early 2024. This was achieved through consuming reverse repos + issuing new bonds in advance. Finally, investors should pay close attention to what Secretary Besent said in an interview with CNBC last week: 'The market and the economy are addicted, we are addicted to this government spending, there will be a detox period.'

Strategic Bitcoin Reserve

As of last Friday, discussions among cryptocurrency natives about strategic cryptocurrencies / bitcoin reserves are still hopeful - despite the market repeatedly shrugging off the impact of this news in the past 6 weeks, making it a 'buy the rumor, sell the news' event.

Is "cyclical" thinking flawed?

It has to be admitted that this 'cycle' is different from past cycles. For example:

BTC hit a record high before the first halving.

The cycle needs to be much shorter, only two years.

The end of the cottage season is completely different because BTC's dominance has been gradually rising since early 2023.

With the support of the US government, Bitcoin has now been fully integrated into the financial system.

If there are deficiencies in the 'cyclical thinking,' then we may not have reached the peak. Instead, perhaps we are entering a pause/adjustment/consolidation phase before the next round of uptrend, rather than a bear market lasting up to one year with a potential price drop of 75-80% (as we have seen in the past)?

Although the cycle is evolving, we still expect the bear market to take 9-12 months to end.

Final Thoughts

To sum up the points of this article again:

We are currently in the "complacency" phase of the cycle shown in the chart, where all the bullish catalysts that were being discussed years ago have already played out.

The economy may be heading for a downturn. The message conveyed by the Trump administration is very clear, they are actually telling us that the economy needs detoxification. This is very similar to Powell's warning of 'pain is coming' before the rate hike in early 2022. We should take heed.

Given the current extremely pessimistic market sentiment, it is foreseeable that BTC will rebound to the $90000 level in the short term. However, we believe that this will trigger large-scale selling, which could kill any hope of a recovery in the bull market structure.

However, we are not always maintaining a bearish view, but we can consider being bullish again when the following factors occur:

Fiscal austerity / The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the United States is working to reverse.

Federal Reserve / significantly reducing quantitative easing.

A massive influx of global liquidity driven by the Federal Reserve (not just China).

S&P 500 / Nasdaq's major adjustment / 'surrender'.

But what we must insist on now is that the peak of the cycle has arrived, and the bear market is coming. Of course, in the long run, this is a good thing. When cryptocurrencies enter the 'turning point' period, it is time to calm down and rebuild the financial system on the public blockchain. I like the bear market. As the tide recedes, people can more easily distinguish the noise from the signal of the past cycles, which will prepare us for the next bull market.

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The content is for reference only, not a solicitation or offer. No investment, tax, or legal advice provided. See Disclaimer for more risks disclosure.
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