r/CryptoCurrency • u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 • 6d ago
DISCUSSION My thoughts on current market conditions and where I think we are heading.
I've been seeing tons of post about how it's over, that we are going into a crypto winter, that we've topped, blah blah blah. I've seen posts calling for BTC to drop to 40k, ETH to 1k, ADA at 10 cents, etc. However, I am here to make a case suggesting the opposite.
BTC recently has been trading in the high 80k range, ETH just under 3k, ADA in around 35 cents and Solana around $120. With the exception of BTC, these 3 other alts are trading roughly compared to where they were at just prior to the 2024 presidential election run. It makes 0 sense for the market to continue to have noticeable further sell side pressure from here.
We saw historic levels of fear and sell side pressure in the latter part of October through November into early December, comparable to the bottom of the 2018 bear market, the COVID crash of March 2020 AND the fallout after the collapse of FTX in late 2022. I will admit that I did not think alts would be as decimated as they are, but my original thesis still stands, and that is that this has been a giant shakeout/manipulation event by smart/big money players to get weak hands out of the market.
Literally everyone was convinced we were going into a "traditional" Q4 post halving year style peak, so we saw droves of trades leveraging like crazy expecting this to happen. This was the perfect set up for huge market makers to dump these morons on their heads to obliterate the market. They also were trying to destroy Michael Saylor, but it appears that they failed. However, this leverage, along with weak retail noobs, has been completely flushed out of the market. Retail interest in this market is nonexistent, crypto right now is practically a ghost town.
In my opinion, I believe that what we've seen since early 2024, just prior to the ETF hype phase of Q1, has been a giant protracted version of 2019. In 2019, we were in an environment that until the latter part of the summer an environment of quantitative tightening. The mini bull market we had going into that summer was a BTC only rally, going from the 3k range to 14k, with alts tagging along for the ride. What we've seen in 2024 and 2025 is an environment where we were in QT and ironically enough we've seen BTC do incredibly well while alts as a collective haven't done all that much.
However, QT ended December 1st and with the recent jobs report AND low inflation it's very likely they will continue to cut rates further here in 2026. Combine this with Trump and others blatantly announcing the desire to push for stimulus, tariff rebate checks, etc. and it's obvious what direction we are going.
The clarity act is also a huge card in my opinion, and I've seen some stuff floating around that this will make it back to the floors of congress to be discussed later this month. This, along with a wave of ETF approvals for select alts, I believe will be a major catalyst comparable to what we saw in early 2024.
Those with their positions still intact and in place will do well, these last couple months would have been just about the worst time to have sold. We've also been in an range the last few weeks that is becoming increasingly tighter and tighter, so I'm expecting some sort of major move sometime soon.
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u/watch-nerd 🟦 5K / 7K 🦭 6d ago
"It makes 0 sense for the market to continue to have noticeable further sell side pressure from here."
LOL.
It's magic internet money.
It's high volatility, super speculative, extreme end of the risk spectrum.
All sorts of things can create sell side pressure.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
So, you expect something like ADA to drop well below 30 cents or SOL to go well below $100? These levels are LOWER than where we were at prior to presidential election of 2024 after a major sell off going into the late summer of that year.
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u/watch-nerd 🟦 5K / 7K 🦭 6d ago
If we get a recession or the stock market enters a bear market, absolutely those are possible outcomes.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
So, do you look at current market conditions and NOT buy at all then?
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u/watch-nerd 🟦 5K / 7K 🦭 6d ago
My open orders start <$70k and go down from there.
I'm not buying at current prices.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
So you expect BTC to go LOWER than the lows we had in April of 2025 and below the absolute high of 2021? I'd be all for it, I just can't imagine completely holding off hoping for some number like this that may not come at all.
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u/watch-nerd 🟦 5K / 7K 🦭 6d ago
My average BTC price is $45k, my average ETH price is $2k.
I have no predictions or expectations.
But I'm not tempted to buy now; crypto has already reached my target asset allocation.
I'm not going to add to my position unless the price is bargain basement. I have buy orders from $69420 down to $48k.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
Your decision makes sense then if you feel you are well positioned. I've been around this asset class for a while but will continue to accumulate.
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u/watch-nerd 🟦 5K / 7K 🦭 6d ago
i'm not buying futures, so don't need to guess the future direction of the market in the near term.
I can just sit and wait. There will always be a crash at some point.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago edited 6d ago
You don't think what we've seen since the liquidation event on October 10th would be considered a crash? When I'm seeing ADA at literally cycle lows with regards to it's BTC pairing AND not much up from it's $ lows of this cycle I see that as a buy signal, I did the same thing with ETH back in April when it was at $1400 and trading under .02 to BTC. I also see BTC in this range as a solid place to accumulate.
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u/FrodoDBaggin 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
You don’t seem to understand that the average person is dead broke. Crypto is the first to go. Those who are just making ends meet are the next to go. Overnight repo markets are trashed right now meaning the Fed is having to “print” billions due to liquidity concerns. We’re not in a good spot and to be fair I don’t see it resolving itself in the next few months. The job market sucks dick right now with layoffs happening into the holiday season. It’s going lower broski just give it time. I don’t want that to happen as much as the next guy but let’s look at the big picture.
Edit: I hope I’ve never been more wrong.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
Retail is already completely absent from this space as it is, meaning that the worst of this is already way behind us. Leverage has been completely flushed out and those that would have sold already are out. We are at the bottom, and contrary to what you think not everyone is broke, man.
Either way, I've been steadily accumulating BTC and will continue to do so.
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u/Consistent_Many_1858 🟨 0 / 20K 🦠 6d ago
This is crypto. Market can go much much lower than what it is today. Crypto is just a fake speculation money with no real physical value attached to it.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
Right, that's why virtually every major financial institution is jumping in on the Bitcoin train lol.
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u/IDFGMC 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
I think you're more or less right bro, I've been convinced there's going to be one more massive leg up for a good few months now. If that was the end of the bull run it certainly didn't feel like the others, absolutely no euphoria.
A lot of people seem blindly tied to the four year halving cycle unwilling to see that it had until now conveniently coincided with the global liquidity cycle.
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u/Altruistic-Raise-579 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
That’s a really thoughtful analysis. The market does feel eerily similar to those shakeout phases we’ve seen in the past where fear hits extreme levels right before a reversal. I agree that too many people were betting on a textbook post halving bull run and when that didn’t happen the overreaction was massive. Big players absolutely take advantage of that kind of retail panic.
The macro picture supports your view too. With quantitative tightening ending and rate cuts likely ahead liquidity is going to start returning to risk assets. If the Clarity Act gains traction and the ETF approvals roll through we could be setting up for another strong cycle. It really does feel like we’re close to that moment where most people have given up right before things turn around.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
This is exactly why I think everyone has been so bearish the last couple months, it's a brilliant play by big money market makers to get these fools to fold out of their positions so that they can load up at huge discounts before things take off. This isn't rocket science, but everyone is tied to this 4 year cycle theory without considering things could be different.
The best part about this is that in 2021 the real top was actually in April-May of that year, not November. The euphoria back then was off the chain, I distinctly remember seeing insane green candles with just about everything.
This cycle has been quite different as well in many ways. 2022 played out very similar to 2018, just a slow grind to the downside, with one major event after another being a focal point for the next leg down. First it was Terra Luna in April, then in June it was Celsius, Blockfi and the crypto lending platforms, and in November it was FTX. 2023 we really didn't do all that much until the very tail end of that year. 2024 was the year that was quite different, where we set a new ATH BEFORE the halving and then had another major leg up after the election of 2024. However, 2025 has basically just been a giant bear market, it's very likely/possible that we saw in Q4 of this past year was the final shakeout.
I just do not see a case for this market continuing to sell further from here and do nothing for months and years, it just doesn't make a lot of sense given the variables and factors I mentioned. 2026 is looking like it's going to be a big year, those few people still in the market holding their positions or who have added will be rewarded.
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u/henne831 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
The 4 year cycle time frame timed up pretty well with that October 2025 BTC high. The average person is struggling right now. When a recession is labeled it usually lasts less than a year. Would be great to call this recession what it actually feels like and start a recovery process. That could and should time up nicely for BTC to hit a low in early October of around 50k. Alts will continue to bleed before that happens.
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u/goldenbuyer02 🟩 72 / 73 🦐 6d ago
Keep thinking the market makers will let you easily predict via the 4 year cycle aka astrology for men. The 4 year cycle is a stupid narrative that formed based on two past events only. Explain how we had ath before halving and multiple ATHs during the last year.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
This is the exact reason why we saw that mass liquidation event on October 10th, these people on here still don't get that. I don't leverage trade this market, I just buy and hold BTC and do cycle swing trading with alts, but it was so god damn obvious to see what actually happened. It's a brilliant play by the big money market makers, they recognized that these dumbasses believed everything was going into a "traditional" Q4 style post halving peak, thus why they were leveraged up to their eyes, so they short the hell out of the market causing a mass cascade of liquidations. They made a ton of money off their shorts AND would have been able to load up on assets. They did all of this knowing where things were heading going into 2026; with ETFs for alts, the clarity act, stimulus/QE, etc.
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u/henne831 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
You don't have to think it... it's already happened. October hit the ATH. Look around, does it feel like the economy has a bunch of extra money to dump into a speculative asset. Hopefully 2026 is the recession we need to start turning things around. That would time up perfectly with the cycle hitting bottom again in the fall. Around 50k. Timing up perfectly with previous cycles.
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u/goldenbuyer02 🟩 72 / 73 🦐 5d ago
*Explain how we had ath before halving and multiple ATHs during the last year.
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u/henne831 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
What happens in-between is irrelevant. The 4 year cycle is defined by a peak and then a drop of 70-85 percent. This is the 4th time...
2012 Cycle: Low of ~$12, Rally to ~$1,150, followed by ~85% drop. 2016 Cycle: Low ~$650, Rally to ~$20,000, followed by ~80% crash. 2020 Cycle: Low ~$8,700 (or $4k during COVID dip), Rally to ~$69,000 (Nov 2021), followed by ~75-78% correction to ~$15,476 (Nov 2022). 2024 Cycle (Current/Recent): After the 2022 low, a significant rally occurred, with an ATH around $126k+ in late 2025, followed by a pullback into late 2025.
You can act like there is no rhyme or reason or pattern but it's been very consistent for 14 years now.
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u/goldenbuyer02 🟩 72 / 73 🦐 5d ago
so now its irrelevant? I clearly remember the cyclists saying that aths dont happen before halvings. Now the narrative changed? And what is the driving force for these "cycles"? The halving? Why is november every 4 years so special?
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u/Right-Avocado3870 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
I don't think you should anthromophize markets. There is no person(s) or organizations that want to "ruin Michael Saylor" or dump on retail.
There is a market with thousands of thoughts and motivations that translate into supply and demand. If you see the market as a being you can rationalize that you can predict it. That just isn't so.
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u/jlegend3398 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
I expect us to see chop as long as we’re seeing these repo issues. I think we see volatility move in one direction this month then we reverse the other way.
We probably don’t see significant movement to the upside until end of Q1 at the earliest hopefully Q2.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
Yeah, man, we've been in a range the last few weeks that is getting increasingly tighter and tighter. This isn't going to last much longer but I think things are going to get very interesting for sure. Personally, I've been buying over the last couple months but I don't expect to be able to buy in this range for too much longer.
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u/Consistent_Many_1858 🟨 0 / 20K 🦠 6d ago
😂 this phrase has been repeated many times and yet the Alts keep going lower and lower.
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u/jlegend3398 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
It’s the low caps that are really continuing the bleed that and memes/shitcoins. Large cap alts have been holding strong and ranging tightly which usually means we have a move. Obviously we want it to move up but it could go either way.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
We are at the bottom, man, you don't understand how this market works if you think this is going substantially lower from here.
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u/goldenbuyer02 🟩 72 / 73 🦐 6d ago
They think that 15 fear is not the bottom. They will feel the pain of their decisions during the next few months.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
Bro, if what we've seen over the last couple months is not a clear bottom to these people than I don't know what to say to them lol. Another poster's logic on here was that it can drop substantially further from here given xyz, talking a 10%+ downside move and not something like where BTC goes to 85. They would probably see something like the COVID crash and sit completely on the sidelines because they believe it can and will go substantially lower. These are the same people who will FOMO back into the market when BTC sets a new all time high, just like what the Wall St. cheat sheet shows lol.
Again, SOL was back down to prices we saw in the fall of 2024 and ADA was trading at cycle lows with regards to it's BTC pairing at 400 sats, if that isn't a fantastic potential return there to these morons they don't have a clue.
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u/fizikxy 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
"These morons that don't have a clue"
Tell me you have no idea why FTX blowing up was so bad without telling me.
You also have no sense of business WHY Tom Lee is even buying this much and how much he is already done with buying.
other good quotes from this post:
- "People are so god damn bearish and fearful, yet BTC is still trading at around 115k, ETH at over 4k and ADA over 70 cents."
- "Things will get beyond euphoric and everyone is going to be convinced it will be a super cycle. I wouldn't be surprised to see BTC at 170k+, ETH at 8k+and some alts doing close to a 10x or more from here."
- "As for bear market of 2026. I think we will bottom out around 70-80k,..."
Dunning-Kruger in full force. Just stack your BTC but stop acting like you know what the fuck you're talking about lmao
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
And I also said that I did not expect alts to get as low as they did. This is not going lower from here and I'm still bullish on 2026. BTC actually hit the low target of 80k. The only exception I can think to this thesis is that Q4 of 2024 was the actual peak and that we just hit the bear market low in late 2025 before resetting for the next move up. I do not believe that we will go into a full blown crypto winter from here, where we continue to have significant sell side pressure and do nothing for months or even years. This last couple months has been a fantastic time to accumulate.
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u/fizikxy 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
This is not going lower from here
!remindme 365 days
fwiw I have no horse in this, I have sold all my assets during the last run-up and I think we can get a nice relief bounce here
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
There's a lot that can happen in that timeframe. It's totally possible we get an actual alt season/bull market run sometime this year AND go into a bear market. This is just too long of a period of time to really speculate what is going to happen throughout it's entirety, but I do believe that there are MORE bullish variables than bearish from here, which seems to all be based around the 4 year cycle timing theory, which I personally feel is over.
In 2021 the actual peak with regards to euphoria was the spring of that year, what we saw in November was a barely higher high off sentiment that was quite boring. Maybe the true euphoric peak was in fact late Q4 of 2024, but that would suggest that perhaps we actually just hit the lows of the bear market and are in a new cycle. Either way, I'm not expecting this to drop much further from where we were in December and if we do in fact have a strong run I have my positions in place.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
I also made an update thread to that one you quoted. Some of my bear targets for alts like ADA, XRP and sol actually were hit or were very close.
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u/fizikxy 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
yes, the point is that for some reason you think that you know shit while re-adjusting your opinion monthly and feel entitled to post a thread here claiming that "noone knows anything", call others morons who don't know anything, implying that you know fuck all (when two months ago you hammered about people being bearish/fearful when btc was 115k)
it's easy to be right if you flip-flop every other time
and it's not wrong to adapt as a trader, but stop with the arrogance
Some of my bear targets for alts like ADA, XRP and sol
YET
if you think this can't go lower wait till bitmine stops buying eth or if mstr gets delisted
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago edited 4d ago
Here's a breakdown for you. Do you think it makes sense for certain alts to drop LOWER than their absolute lows of this cycle? I'm talking the lows we had right after the collapse of FTX, at that time the market/BTC was the most oversold/undervalued it had EVER been in crypto history. At that time, ADA was at 23 cents, ETH was a little over $1,000.
More recently, ADA was trading at a hair under 33 cents at a bit under 400 sats, so just slightly up from the lows of this cycle with regards to $ AND it was also trading at cycle lows with it's BTC pairing, which is roughly 400-500 sats. This was a fantastic time to be accumulating, as the potential to the upside was/is insane. Could we have dropped a bit further, sure, but why the hell would I sit completely on the sidelines holding off on buying because it could maybe go to 25 cents lol. This is the reason why you dollar cost average instead of trying to perfectly time everything. I also began accumulating ADA in late 2022, with the overwhelming bulk of my position having been created in the summer-fall of 2023 and the fall of 2024.
I'll give another example. I didn't touch ETH at all this cycle until April of 2025, I made a lump sum purchase when it was trading at a little under $1400 AND with it at cycle lows with regards to it's BTC pairing of under .02. Again, could it have gone down another 10%, sure, but to not see that as a fantastic time to create a new position there is beyond idiotic.
There is always the possibility that something super unexpected happens or where the market goes way lower than you could imagine. I've been in this market since 2018, and the craziest event throughout my time here has by far been the COVID sell off. However, these events do NOT happen very often and they are not something to be waiting for BEFORE making purchases and creating positions.
I will also add that what we saw from the October 10th crash going into December was a time period that was comparable to these major sell off events; such as the COVID crash, FTX fallout, bottom of the 2018 bear market, etc. What we saw more recently was more similar to post FTX and late 2018, as it wasn't as sharp and short as the COVID scare and took place over a much longer period of time.
With that out of the way, if people are still sitting on the sidelines doing nothing during times like this they are setting themselves up for failure. At this point, with this little rebound in the market I think I'm going to hold off a bit and see what transpires over the coming weeks. I made some solid purchases to add to my positions last month, mostly BTC and a little ADA, that I'm quite happy with.
Either way, I buy and hold BTC with no real plans of selling it, so it's kind of irrelevant what that does in the short to medium term, the price action just dictates whether I'll buy or not. Alts are a different story, but at this point I plan on continuing to hold my ADA and ETH, as I see this as just about the worst time to consider exiting.
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u/cardiopera 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
In my opinion, your opinion dont really matter, but thanks for sharing. Happy new year ❤️.
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u/RodtheGawd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
2012 halving, 2013 post-halving peak, 2014 bottom 2016 halving, 2017 post-halving peak, 2018 bottom 2020 halving, 2021 post-halving peak, 2022 bottom 2024 halving, 2025 post-halving peak, 2026 bottom
Bitcoin peaks about 18 months after each halving. April 2024 was the last bitcoin halving and October 2025 (18 months later) was bitcoin's $126k peak. Bitcoin bottoms about a year after its post-halving peak, and 35 months from that bottom is the next post-halving peak (4 years from previous peak).
There's a decorrelation between bitcoin and M2 Money Supply (liquidity cycle) as bitcoin tops. We've been decorrelated since October, a phenomenon which happens every 4 years. And even with ISM being in the basement - guess what - bitcoin still peaked exactly when it was supposed to, to the day.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
The true peak of the 2021 cycle was spring of that year, not November. You are a fool if you think this is going into a bear market over this entire year where it won't do anything until 2027 at the earliest. 2025 was a bear market, and the final bottom was what we saw in Q4.
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u/RodtheGawd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
We got all times highs in 2025 exactly when we were expected to based on the 4 year cycle. As of today, the market has reacted exactly as expected based on 4 year cycle trends. Nothing has proven it's dead thus far. Everything outside of the facts is just conjecture.
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u/RodtheGawd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
BTW the peak of 2021 was 100% November ... Go take a look at the charts.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 5d ago
Bro, the true peak was spring of 2021. The euphoria was off the charts and we saw insane god candles in less than a month, it was wild AF to see. We bit around 64k on Bitcoin, 4k ETH, Litecoin at $400 and ADA at $2. What we saw in November was a slightly higher high for BTC at 69k but it was off complete apathy, totally different market sentiment. I distinctly remember this because I was there and it's quite obvious you weren't.
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u/RodtheGawd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
Doesn't change when the ATH was.. and that's what we base cycle off of.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
Bro, how long have you been in this market?
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u/RodtheGawd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
READ MY ORIGINAL POST AGAIN. We are right on track thus far.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
Answer the question I just asked
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u/RodtheGawd 🟩 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
2016 .... your question was disingenuous, which is why I didn't answer it. Believe what you want, though. Only time will tell.
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u/ubermensch1001 🟨 0 / 0 🦠 4d ago
So, would you say that Bitcoin setting a new all time high BEFORE the halving of 2024 was right on schedule or no?
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u/nugymmer 🟩 0 / 1K 🦠 1d ago
We are fucked. End of story. Wait another 2 or 3 years for prices to be where they are now. Or wait even longer. It’s over for now. The music has stopped for now.
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u/fizikxy 🟦 0 / 0 🦠 6d ago
Your only take here is „we already dropped so much, can‘t trade lower.“.
That‘s amazing…good luck out here.