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How long will the crypto bear market last? A data-driven look at past Bitcoin cycles, capitulation patterns, and potential bottom timelines.
How long will this bear market last?
I don’t have a damn clue how long the bear market will last. Anybody that can tell you where/how/when the market bottoms is guessing and it’s really hard to talk about specific targets. But I am going to analyze some of the historic bear cycles that we’ve had from days standpoint. Maybe it doesn’t matter and it’s all just a function of macro liquidity / where people put their $ but I’m still going to try to see some of the historical downtrends that we have had in crypto. I’ll be using mostly TA and some other references.
First, let’s look at some of the other downtrends. I am going to be marking the total time from ATH to the LOW of that cycle.
2017 Cycle with 2018 Bear: ~365 days, 1 year. Price down 84% over this period
2020: March Covid V shaped reversal: This hasn’t ever happened before and was a freak event with a 50% drawdown in a day + covid $ printing, sending everything. Drop was 50% in that day but overall, much higher top to bottom.
2022: -77% and again, 365 days from top to bottom. We had several strong legs down throughout 2022, with LUNA in May 2022 and then FTX later in November 2022, which was the final bottom.
Currently 2026: ~132 days from the top
-This is simply the top to bottom move. It does not include the accumulation period, which oftentimes lasts anywhere from 2-4 months. Accumulation is defined as a chop period where price mostly just stays in the same area, with little volatility and not much volume.
-Typically the bitcoin market cycle looked like this: 1 year strong move up (2017, 2021), 1 year strong move down (2018, 2022), 1 year accumulation and chop (2019, 2020).
-It took approximately 1 year from the top to the bottom in 2017-2018 and 2021-2022. 2020 was an anomaly because of many weird factors.
-1 small note on final capitulations: All major crypto bear market downtrends were completed with one final capitulation candle. In the 2017–2018 crypto bear market, it was the 6k->3k move. In the 2022 crypto bear market, the final bottom was marked by the FTX collapse. After capitulation, accumulation typically begins in every crypto bear market cycle. I believe we may have already seen the final capitulation of this crypto bear market in 2026 with the move from 100k->60k.
Unlike 2017 and 2021, the bull market in 2024 and 2025 were much slower and drawn out. You did not see the majority of the gains in 1 year like the previous 2 bull runs.
Note: I’m marking the bull run when bitcoin really started to take off. I don’t think it’s fair to say early 2023 was a ‘bull run’, personally. It was an accumulation period and generally choppy. Yes, there were obvious spurts of altcoin activity during these slower times but a full raging bull market is more characterized as the majority of 2021/2017 IMO.
2024 and 2025 had long periods of consolidation and chop similar to 2020. There wasn’t a gigantic vertical move like we saw in previous bull runs and thus was a ‘harder cycle’ for many traders (2025 especially). There are many many potential reasons for why this happened and this isn’t the article for that. My friend Alex Kruger has a good summary:
In summary, 2024 and 2025 were different than the past bull runs in my opinion, at least in terms of the timing and velocity.
As shown, the average time for the last 2 bear markets was about 1 year from top to bottom. I do not think that this is going to be the case this time around.
The reasons why are:
–ETFs have changed the game in terms of flows. Of course ETFs can go down (as they have) but I don’t think crypto is as closed as it was in years past. I think that these enable more passive bidders and more accesibility.
-We didn’t accelerate as strongly and had many months of consolidation. From a TA standpoint, usually these consolidation areas are going to be strong support areas on the way down. Specifically the 50-70k area, where price spent 8 months:
-The excessive froth from previous cycles has largely been wiped out. You can see this in CEX coin launches, with almost none sustaining gains after TGE. On-chain activity has also been far more muted over the past year. In prior cycles, liquidity took more than a year to fully wash out. For example, $AXS moved from $0.35 to nearly $200 and was still around $8 a year after its peak. This time, altcoins have already collapsed toward zero much faster.
-To me, it makes sense that if the upswing was not the same as previous bull cycles, the downtrend will be different as well. Although I didn’t believe in the 4 year cycle, I have since been proven wrong as of now. Even still, I do not believe this bear market will look like previous ones.
So how long will it take to bottom? I don’t know. I think there are a lot of other factors at play (notably macro, equities, metals, risk appetite, AI, etc) but I don’t personally think that we will need another 7 months to grind lower. Remember, the 365 days is only from top to bottom and doesn’t include accumulation.
-Remember my comment on capitulation in the first part? I believe that bitcoin has already capitulated with that big move from 100k-> 60k. I believe we are now in the ACCUMULATION phase of the cycle. Accumulation can last anywhere from a few weeks to several months. See some other periods here:
From the recent past, bitcoin has chopped for about 2-4 months for the accumulation period.
-1 concern I have with this analysis is the possibility that we have not seen that last capitulation move yet; the 6k-3k 2018 move or the FTX dump. If that move is still yet to come, then we’re probably going to grind up a little bit and make 1 last big move from 75k–> 50k or lower. if this happens, I think you can comfortably spell ‘bottom’ and assume that accumulation has begun and we have anywhere from 60-120 days from that point.
-This is not an article discussing the long term sustainability of bitcoin and crypto. I know that 2025 was horrible because crypto pretty much underperformed every other asset group while the rest of the world was still fairly strong in terms of macro. That typically does not happen.
-I do not know where the next flows are going to come from. It seems that there are better things to speculate on (real AI companies; real equities, real gold) and not as much buying crypto and our shitcoins.
-I do not believe crypto has topped and I do believe there will be another strong run for bitcoin. I know there are many concerns such as Quantum on the horizon but I still think we are a few years out.
-If macro pulls back heavily, then this entire outlook is probably wrong and are just going to test lower levels and we ironically probably do complete the same cycle that we did before in 2018 and 2022: 365 days full of bear and then accumulation after.
-We will have small spurts of altcoin action throughout the chop period. Even in periods of 2018/2019/2022/2023 there were big moves with altcoins for a few weeks across all sectors. It’s not going to be pure death the entire time and there will be trading opportunities.
Not Financial Advice / Crypto since 2016/ DYOR https://t.co/2tk69SLmJY https://t.co/R4qO2qt1o9
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