Looking at this drop, it really is a bit bewildering. Just one month in, and it's this severe. If the bear market is really going to persist, I truly can't imagine how far it will go.
I am currently firmly bearish, not just guessing, there are several places that make me particularly alert:
Firstly, the hardest signal is the technical aspect. The four-year cycle can basically be confirmed as over, with daily, weekly, and monthly charts all breaking down. The trend is already extremely weak; this is not a simple correction as one would expect.
More contradictory is the market sentiment. Even with such a drop, the long-to-short ratio is still frighteningly high, indicating that there are still many people trying to catch the bottom. Even the perpetual contract funding rates for BTC and ETH are still positive—this means leveraged longs haven't admitted defeat, and the market's bubble hasn't been fully drained.
Looking at the price action, when BTC broke below 100,000, the rebound didn't even touch 100,000 again; the momentum was too weak. This doesn't look like a reversal at all; it feels more like a final exit opportunity for those who haven't yet run.
I particularly agree with one viewpoint now: the reversal signal can't just be about how much it has dropped, but rather how cold the market sentiment has become. For example, when no one is shouting to catch the bottom anymore, when ETH's contract trading volume is even lower than BTC's, when spot trading volume remains persistently sluggish—only then might we truly see a bottom.
At this position, if one is really itchy, they can only try a small position in spot trading, and must set a stop-loss. If extreme market conditions arise, those institutions with leverage will be forced to liquidate, and once the selling starts, there’s no escaping.
Additionally, there’s a detail: since mid-October, market liquidity has been continuously deteriorating, with new funds not entering and old funds withdrawing. In the short term, there’s no hope of a rebound.
So now I feel that the more it is like this, the less one should be swayed by the “catching the bottom” voices. Until there is a clear reversal in trend, waiting is the best strategy. The voices shouting to catch the bottom haven't disappeared, and we should continue to be onlookers—preserving the principal is more important than anything else.
