The crypto market still lacks decisive evidence that the current bear phase has ended. According to Coinglass, from May 19 through July 3, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index remained negative for 46 consecutive days, setting a new record for the longest negative streak since the indicator was introduced. That surpassed the previous 40-day negative stretch recorded from January 16 to February 24 this year, and also exceeded the roughly 30-day negative period seen during last year’s “10.11 crash.” At the same time, BTC briefly fell below $58,000 and ETH lost the $1,600 level, reinforcing the view that the timing of the bear market’s end remains highly uncertain.
Strategy’s BTC sale and ETF outflows became the main trigger for the latest selloff
From late May to early June, Strategy, the largest corporate BTC treasury company and a flagship crypto-related stock, sold Bitcoin again for the first time in three years. Even though the transaction involved only 32 BTC, the move had an outsized psychological impact on the market. Panic spread quickly, and major assets including BTC, ETH, and SOL sold off sharply. Together with continued net outflows from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and a broader contraction in crypto market liquidity, the sale intensified fears that the market had entered a confirmed bear phase.
During the first week of June, Bitcoin briefly dropped below $60,000, marking its worst week since the 2022 FTX collapse. As of June 7, BTC had fallen 16% over the prior seven days and was down more than 50% from its all-time high above $126,000 in 2025. Meanwhile, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had posted 13 consecutive trading days of net outflows totaling approximately $5.5 billion. More importantly for technical traders, Bitcoin fell below the widely watched 200-week moving average, a breakdown that significantly weakened market confidence.
Paul Howard, a senior executive at crypto trading firm Wincent, described the environment as a “silent bear market,” arguing that a break below the 200-week moving average is one of the clearest confirmations that a market has entered a bearish phase. Although BTC later rebounded modestly to around $65,000, several analysts warned that the move might not be sustainable. Griffin Ardern, co-founder of Primal Fund, said the market was still far from a “true bottom.” From a sentiment perspective, Strategy’s decision to sell BTC effectively shattered the last remaining hopes for a strong near-term recovery and turned a fragile correction into what many participants now view as a formally confirmed bear market.
Institutions kept searching for a bottom: $53,600, the World Cup window, and long-term holder behavior
On June 11, CryptoQuant said Bitcoin could form a bottom around $53,600. That level corresponds to BTC’s realized price, or the average on-chain cost basis of all market participants. According to the firm, in previous major bear cycles Bitcoin has often bottomed near, or slightly below, this realized price level. The argument suggests that the current market may be approaching a historically important accumulation zone, even if short-term downside risk remains.
On June 12, BIT published a weekly report titled Will the FIFA World Cup Become the End of Bitcoin’s Bear Market? In it, the firm argued that Bitcoin’s current bear trajectory was broadly consistent with its outlook from early February 2026. BIT said the previously projected A-B-C corrective structure had entered its final phase. In that framework, wave A fell into the $60,000 to $69,000 range, after which BTC rebounded into the $80,000 to $90,000 zone and topped out near $83,000. Since then, rebound momentum has gradually weakened. BIT also noted that the Fear and Greed Index had moved close to historically meaningful low levels and that the current structure still bears some resemblance to the 2022 bear-market bottom. It therefore maintained its prior view that the summer trading lull during the 2026 FIFA World Cup could mark the tail end of this cycle’s bear market.
On June 17, research firm K33 offered a more constructive interpretation based on holder behavior. It said the amount of BTC held by long-term holders had reached an all-time high, potentially signaling that the bear market was approaching its final stage. The firm highlighted that in 2026, reactivation of old coins had been notably muted: as of June 6, only 218,421 BTC had been reactivated, versus 1.18 million BTC during the same period in 2024. K33 argued that lower old-coin activity indicates reduced selling intent among long-term holders and shows that patient capital is steadily absorbing supply. Still, Bitcoin’s subsequent decline quickly challenged the market’s willingness to trust bottom-calling narratives.
STRC dislocation, buybacks, and monetization plans kept Strategy at the center of market risk
On June 18, after already falling below $95 earlier in the month, Strategy’s preferred stock STRC dropped through $90 and closed at $89. That was the lowest daily closing price since its IPO and also the weakest dividend-adjusted close since November of last year. The stock then continued to trade lower and increasingly detached from par value, becoming a focal point for investors evaluating the financial stress surrounding Strategy and its capital structure.
By June 26, STRC had fallen as low as $73 in premarket trading, setting a new all-time low. At that point, market attention concentrated on two issues. First, June 30 was the ex-dividend date, and eligible holders were set to receive $0.48 per share on July 15. Second, the stock’s monthly dividend rate was due to be reset. At the time, STRC’s effective yield had climbed close to 15%, leading investors to expect Strategy to raise the dividend rate from 11.50% to at least 12% or 12.50%.
Then, on June 29, Strategy announced a $1 billion digital credit securities repurchase program and also launched a board-approved Bitcoin monetization plan of up to $1.25 billion. As various financing plans progressed, the company’s U.S. dollar reserves rose to $2.55 billion, giving it enough liquidity to service preferred instruments such as STRC. The immediate discount crisis eased, and STRC recovered back above $80, with the latest quoted price at $87.87. Even so, from a market-structure standpoint, a durable return toward $100 is still widely seen as a necessary condition for confidence in Strategy-linked risk to normalize.
Long-term holders and ETH whales moved into loss, deepening capitulation signals
The continued decline in BTC and ETH has materially expanded unrealized losses across large holder cohorts. On June 25, Bitcoin briefly fell to around $59,100, pushing the amount of BTC held at a loss to 10.83 million coins, an all-time high. That figure surpassed the previous bear-market peak of roughly 10.5 million BTC. Long-term holders, defined as those holding for at least 155 days, were sitting on a record 14.8 million BTC at the time. Given that the circulating supply is around 20 million BTC, roughly 37% of their holdings were underwater. The latest figures show long-term held supply has since risen further to 16.61 million BTC, while the average holding cost has dropped to about $49,700.
Ethereum’s holder structure also deteriorated sharply. Data from June 26 showed that ETH whales had moved into loss for the first time since 2019. Even during the 2022 bear market, the largest whale cohort—those holding more than 100,000 ETH—had remained profitable. Now, unrealized profit ratios are negative across all three major whale categories: 1,000 to 10,000 ETH at -0.26, 10,000 to 100,000 ETH at -0.21, and more than 100,000 ETH at -0.05. This negative condition has persisted for several weeks, underlining broad stress across large-scale ETH holders.
Further evidence of capitulation emerged from Bitcoin’s UTXO data on June 28. The ratio of transactions executed at a loss relative to those executed at a profit fell to the lowest level of this bear cycle, indicating that investors were moving into a clear surrender phase. The last comparable reading appeared during the deep mid-2023 bear-market segment, when Bitcoin briefly traded near $26,000. Ethereum also suffered a relative valuation shock: at one point, ETH’s market capitalization fell below $185 billion, allowing USDT to overtake it temporarily. After ETH rebounded back above $1,700, its market cap recovered to around $207 billion.
Bottom estimates now range from $42,000 to $53,600, with timing still skewed toward autumn
There is still no dominant market consensus on when the bear market will end. In late June, TrendResearch founder Yi Lihua said the market was experiencing the third leg down since “1011,” and argued that if wave theory and cyclical patterns hold, this may be the final major decline. Using Bitcoin’s peak above $126,000 as a reference, a 60% drawdown would imply roughly $51,000, while a 66% drawdown would imply about $43,000. He argued that July to August could mark the final phase of the decline and potentially the best accumulation window, even describing it as one of the most valuable opportunities of the next three years.
On June 25, Lebit Mining Pool founder Jiang Zhuoer predicted that this BTC bear market would bottom on October 31 at $44,016. He later revised the timing by applying the historical pattern that mNAV tends to bottom about six months before the BTC price itself. Based on that framework, he shifted the likely bottoming window to October through December 2026, with a price range of $42,000 to $44,000. His underlying logic is that MSTR’s mNAV—the ratio between stock price and the BTC value per share—has already fallen to 0.72, very close to the prior cycle low of 0.7 recorded on May 11, 2022. Still, he emphasized that an mNAV low does not coincide with the BTC price low. In the last cycle, mNAV bottomed on May 11, 2022 when BTC traded at $31,017, but Bitcoin itself did not bottom until November 21, 2022 at $15,476, a lag of roughly six months.
Other market tools tell a similar story. According to Coinglass, the BTC 4-year average price index dropped to 0.95 between June 25 and June 30, when Bitcoin briefly slipped below $59,000. As BTC later reclaimed $61,000, that index recovered to around 1. Meanwhile, the BTC 200-week moving average heatmap shows that the spot price is now roughly in line with the 200-week average, and has remained below that average since June 23. That may indicate the market is trading in a historical bottoming region, even if confirmation is still lacking.
Three signals still matter most for calling the end of the bear market
The most immediate sentiment gauge remains the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index. At present, it is still sitting at -0.123%. Based on previous periods when the index turned positive, BTC would likely need to rebound toward roughly $77,000 before the premium could return above zero. In practical terms, that means U.S. market demand has not yet shown a convincing reversal.
Putting all available evidence together, three conditions stand out as the clearest indicators that the bear market may truly be ending. First, STRC needs to re-anchor toward $100, which would ease concerns around Strategy-related financial stress. Second, long-term BTC and ETH holders need to move back out of widespread loss, reducing the risk of prolonged capitulation. Third, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index needs to turn positive on a sustained basis, signaling a return of stronger U.S. spot demand. Without a strong exogenous catalyst, the current cycle is more likely to remain in a drawn-out bottoming process. Based on the data points and market views cited here, the bear market may still persist for at least two to three more months, with late September to early October shaping up as a key window for judging whether Bitcoin can stage a durable rebound.