Let's have a rational discussion about whether 2026 will be a small bull market or if the deep bear market will continue.

If we only look at past candlestick charts, 2026 indeed seems like a year when the crypto market might experience a bear market. A quick review of history makes this clear—Bitcoin dropped 58% in 2014 to correct the crazy speculation of 2013, a 73% decline in 2018 corresponding to the ICO bubble burst, and a 64% drop in 2022 to digest the DeFi exuberance. Following this cycle pattern, by 2026 Bitcoin could retrace to the $40,000 to $50,000 range, with altcoins facing even worse, likely experiencing about a 95% wipeout.

But here’s a key variable—the market structure itself has undergone an irreversible qualitative change.

What’s the most important? Now we have spot ETFs and continuous allocation of large institutional funds. This means that even if the market declines, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and other major players will continue to make passive dollar-cost averaging investments at key support levels. It’s now difficult for Bitcoin to experience the sharp crashes seen in 2022; a bottom protection mechanism has been established.

Looking at the macro environment, 2018 and 2022 both occurred during Federal Reserve rate hikes and balance sheet reduction cycles, but the liquidity environment in 2026 will be entirely different. U.S. Treasury interest expenses are soaring; according to institutional forecasts, by 2026, interest payments will exceed the defense budget. This forces the Treasury to maintain loose liquidity to roll over debt. Meanwhile, the money supply is growing at a rate of 5% to 7% annually, and there are no signs of this trend changing.

In this context, Bitcoin’s safe-haven properties become more prominent—it not only hedges against centralization risks but, more importantly, can combat inflation. This is actually the fundamental basis for the consensus that Bitcoin can move into a slow bull or even a long-term bull market in the future, and it’s also the core logic behind many institutions allocating to it.

There’s also a very promising fact. In 2018 and 2022, aside from hype and Bitcoin itself, the crypto ecosystem had almost no substantial real-world applications. But by 2026, the situation will be completely different. We’ve already seen the breakout effect of applications like pumpfun, highly mainstream derivative trading platforms, and mature prediction market ecosystems. Stablecoins are also integrated with mainstream payment services.

This means that the crypto ecosystem is very likely to produce a killer app around 2026—something on the level of TikTok or ChatGPT—that could bring hundreds of millions of new users and real capital inflows. Such a breakthrough in application scale will fundamentally change the market’s fundamentals.

From a probabilistic perspective, estimating the future:

- 50% chance of a soft landing and slow bull in 2026. In this scenario, holding core large coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, BNB, etc., requires no stop-loss; Bitcoin is likely to fluctuate within a wide range of $80,000 to $140,000.

- 20% chance of breaking the four-year cycle pattern and entering a super bull market.

- 30% chance of a repeat of history, leading to a total collapse.

But regardless, for institutional investors, 2026 will definitely be the best window for allocation. For retail investors who are used to chasing 100x coins, they can treat this period as a bear market and develop strategies accordingly, which might actually lead to a more stable mindset.