Bitcoin didn’t crash because fundamentals collapsed.
Altcoins didn’t bleed because innovation died.

The market is falling for a far simpler, far more dangerous reason:

Everyone already believes the cycle is finished.

That belief is now driving price.

Why This Feels Like a Bear Market (Even If It Isn’t One Yet)

Every major crypto cycle ends the same way in people’s memories:

Long, grinding pain after the top.

That pattern is burned into traders’ brains.

So even though crypto is slowly drifting away from the strict 4-year cycle logic, short-term price action hasn’t escaped human psychology.

Price doesn’t move on models.
It moves on expectations.

And the dominant expectation right now is simple:

“After the peak, everything goes down.”

That belief alone is enough to weaken the market.

Cycle Inertia Is Killing Momentum

Here’s what’s actually happening under the surface:

• Traders remember past crashes and reduce risk
• Funds take profits early instead of pressing bets
• Buyers hesitate, waiting for “lower levels”
• Every bounce gets sold faster than the last

None of this requires bad news.

It creates its own gravity.

The market isn’t collapsing because it’s broken.
It’s weakening because people expect it to weaken.

That’s cycle inertia.

Why Even Bulls Are Sitting on Their Hands

Look at past cycles without nostalgia.

After every macro top, there wasn’t a cute pullback.
There was a brutal, patience-destroying decline.

That memory is powerful.

Even traders who are structurally bullish aren’t rushing in, because they remember that historical “bottoms” came much lower than expected.

So instead of buying aggressively, they wait.

And waiting itself becomes selling pressure.

Macro Noise Is Feeding the Fear

Now layer psychology on top of headlines:

• Japan raising rates for the first time in decades
• Cracks forming in the AI trade
• Derivatives creating fake demand without real spot inflows
• Growing pressure narratives around MicroStrategy
• U.S. debt risks resurfacing
• Analysts floating extreme downside scenarios

When Bloomberg casually mentions Bitcoin at $10K in 2026, it doesn’t matter whether it’s realistic.

It plants fear.

Fear doesn’t need to be logical.
It just needs to spread.

Why This Is the Most Dangerous Phase of the Cycle

This is not the phase where legends are made by chasing upside.

This is the phase where accounts get destroyed by overconfidence.

The market is behaving as if the cycle is already complete.

That means:

• Rallies are suspect
• Risk-taking is punished
• Liquidity is fragile
• Survival matters more than returns

This is where traders confuse volatility for opportunity and bleed out slowly.

The Uncomfortable Truth

Whether the bull run is truly over or not almost doesn’t matter right now.

What matters is this:

The market believes it is.

And markets act on belief long before reality catches up.

This is not the time for hero trades. This is not the time for blind conviction. This is not the time to chase narratives.

This is a period where staying solvent beats being right.

Cycles don’t end when price collapses. They end when confidence dies.

And right now, confidence is on life support.