So... is this a bear market?

Plus: This is your last chance

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Crypto Market Cap: $2.31T 0.38% (24H)   Name   Price 24H 7D Bitcoin BTC $68,164.36 0.57% -17.59% Ethereum ETH $1,970.49 0.09% -27.63% XRP XRP $1.51 15.93% -14.13% BNB BNB $648.18 -1.87% -23.70% Prices as of 11:00 AM EST. Click here to see live data.

So... how are we feeling today?

I woke up, looked at the charts, threw up, cried a couple of times, then punched a hole in the wall, and now my hand hurts Well, not the best, but this is not the end of the world 🥲

👉 Bitcoin briefly reached $61K;

👉 The total crypto market cap decreased by $310B;

👉 $2.43B in crypto positions were liquidated over the past day;

👉 The Fear & Greed Index dropped to a level we haven't seen since 2022.

Let's just say I'm glad today isn't Christmas, because I would absolutely HATE defending this space to my anti-crypto uncle rn.

So... are we officially in a bear market?

Not officially - not yet, at least. But we're also not in the easy part of a bull.

What happened checks several early bear-market boxes:

👉 Bitcoin made an all-time high, rolled over, failed to hold momentum, and then dropped hard;

👉 Macro conditions are worsening at the same time;

👉 Risk appetite is thinning across equities, crypto, and high-beta assets;

👉 And Bitcoin is now trading at levels we haven't seen since 2024.

That's real damage, not cosmetic.

But bear markets aren't confirmed by how bad things look in the moment; they're confirmed by what doesn't happen next.

Right now, Bitcoin has broken short-to-medium-term structure, but it hasn't completed the full bear-market sequence.

👉 In confirmed bears, price doesn't just fall; it tries to recover and repeatedly fails.

👉 You get lower highs on the weekly chart, rally after rally sold earlier than the last.

We're not there yet. The market hasn’t proven that demand is gone; it's only proven that leverage was.

Now we really gotta pay attention to the low-$70K area, because it was the last zone where price actually paused and found buyers after the sell-off.

Bitcoin traded in the $70K - $80K range for several days, with buyers stepping in around the low $70Ks. In a fast market, that's enough to define a value area.

Losing it triggered liquidations and fear, but losing it once doesn't seal the bear case. What seals it is failing to get it back.

That's why the next phase is really important.

👉 If Bitcoin can reclaim roughly $72K - $73K and hold it on a weekly close, this move starts to look like a violent correction inside a bull cycle - the kind that resets positioning but doesn't end the trend.

👉 If instead rallies keep stalling below $70K and rolling over, that's when lower highs start forming, and the bear case stops being theoretical.

Basically, we're not calling it a bear market yet because the market has not completed the second act.

We've seen the break. We haven't seen the failed recovery. Until that happens, the structure says "damage," not "death."

Which still isn't pretty... but it's not the end of the world.