The 59K week broke people's nerves. It shouldn't have.
In every bull cycle, mid-cycle corrections exist to wash out overleveraged positions and reset sentiment. Last week did exactly that — $BTC dropped ~34% from the 100K milestone, DeFi had zero contagion, on-chain exchange balances hit multi-year lows, and Strategy dropped another $100M on the dip. That's not a bear market. That's a shakeout.
For context: in 2021's cycle, $BTC fell 54% mid-cycle in May before rallying to 69K. We just had a smaller flush with a more mature infrastructure stack underneath.
What I'm watching now:
• Wednesday CPI — a soft print is the permission slip for $ETH and $AVAX to catch up
• Clarity Act July 4 deadline — 26 days and institutional deployment clocks are ticking
• DeFi TVL held. Protocols didn't break. That changes the risk calculus going forward.
The narrative resets to fear fastest. The price always takes longer. Mid-cycle survivors don't get the headlines — they get the next leg.