According to Coinglass, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index remained in negative territory for 46 consecutive days from May 19 to July 3, the longest such streak since the indicator was introduced. The previous record was 40 straight negative days between January 16 and February 24, already longer than the roughly 30-day negative stretch seen during last year’s “10/11 crash.” With BTC briefly falling below $58,000 and ETH slipping under $1,600, the market has once again turned cautious on when this bear phase might actually end.
The broader message behind the index is straightforward: buying power from the U.S. spot market has remained weak for an extended period. In isolation, a negative Coinbase premium does not prove a cycle bottom is far away. But when combined with sustained ETF outflows, weakening price structure, and deteriorating on-chain profitability, it becomes part of a larger bearish picture. That is why the current debate is no longer simply whether the market is weak, but whether it is already close to exhaustion or still has room to decline further.
Strategy’s BTC sale, ETF outflows, and the break below the 200-week average deepened bearish sentiment
From late May to early June, Strategy—the largest BTC treasury company and a flagship crypto-linked equity—sold BTC again for the first time in 3 years. The amount was only 32 BTC, but the symbolic impact was outsized. The market quickly treated the transaction as a turning point in sentiment, and major assets such as BTC, ETH, and SOL sold off sharply. Together with persistent net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs, the sale revived broad fears that the market had moved decisively back into a bear phase.
During the first week of June, Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 and posted its worst week since the collapse of FTX in 2022. As of June 7, BTC had dropped 16% over the previous 7 days and was down more than 50% from its 2025 all-time high above $126,000. At the same time, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had recorded 13 consecutive trading days of net outflows, with cumulative outflows of around $5.5 billion. More importantly for technical traders, Bitcoin fell below the 200-week moving average, a level widely watched as a major long-term support zone.
Paul Howard, a senior executive at crypto trading firm Wincent, described the market as a “silent bear market,” arguing that a break below the 200-week moving average was a meaningful confirmation signal for a bear-market regime. Although BTC later rebounded modestly toward $65,000, several analysts warned that the bounce might not last. Griffin Ardern, co-founder of Primal Fund, said the market was still some distance away from a “true bottom.” In practical terms, Strategy’s sale became less important because of its size and more important because it shattered the remaining expectation that a sharp upside reversal was imminent.
Bottom calls emerged from research firms, but deeper declines undermined early dip-buying narratives
On June 11, CryptoQuant argued that Bitcoin could form a bottom near $53,600, a level corresponding to Bitcoin’s realized price, or the average on-chain cost basis of all market participants. The firm noted that in previous major bear cycles, BTC often bottomed around realized price or slightly below it. That framework briefly gave the market a more concrete downside target and reinforced the idea that a large portion of the deleveraging process might already be behind it.
On June 12, BIT published its weekly report titled Will the FIFA World Cup Become the End of Bitcoin’s Bear Market? The report said the current market path was broadly consistent with its outlook from early February 2026 and that the previously projected A-B-C corrective structure had entered its final stage. In BIT’s scenario, wave A had pushed BTC into the $60,000 to $69,000 range, followed by a rebound into the $80,000 to $90,000 range, where the asset topped out around $83,000 before losing upward momentum. BIT also noted that the Fear and Greed Index had approached historically significant low zones and still showed structural similarities to the 2022 bear-market bottom. It therefore maintained the view that the summer trading lull during the 2026 World Cup could mark the tail end of this cycle’s bear market.
On June 17, research firm K33 offered a different, more supply-driven argument. It said the amount of BTC held by long-term holders had reached a record high, implying that the bear market might be approaching its final stage. K33 emphasized that the reactivation of old coins in 2026 had been unusually muted. As of June 6, only 218,421 BTC had been reactivated, compared with 1.18 million BTC during the same period in 2024. In K33’s interpretation, lower old-coin activity meant reduced willingness to sell among patient holders, while structurally stronger buyers continued absorbing available supply.
However, those relatively constructive interpretations were quickly challenged by further price weakness. As BTC continued to fall, the market was forced to acknowledge that realized price, dormant coin activity, and sentiment gauges alone were not sufficient to confirm that the bear phase had ended. From that point on, attention shifted to more immediate sources of stress, especially the de-anchoring of Strategy-related securities and the expansion of unrealized losses across long-term holder cohorts.
STRC de-anchoring, widening holder losses, and on-chain capitulation all intensified the stress picture
On June 18, after slipping below $95 earlier in the month, Strategy’s preferred stock STRC closed at $89, its lowest daily close since IPO and the lowest dividend-adjusted close since last November. The selling pressure continued, and on June 26 the stock fell as low as $73 in pre-market trading, a new all-time low. At that moment, the market focused on two issues. First, the June 30 ex-dividend date meant eligible holders would receive $0.48 per share on July 15. Second, investors expected a reset of the monthly dividend rate, with the effective yield approaching 15% and speculation that Strategy would raise the rate from 11.50% to at least 12% or 12.50%.
On June 29, Strategy announced a $1 billion digital credit securities buyback plan and also unveiled a board-approved BTC monetization plan of up to $1.25 billion. As various financing measures were implemented, the company’s dollar reserves reportedly rose to $2.55 billion, strengthening its ability to service obligations on preferred shares including STRC. That move temporarily eased the discount crisis, and STRC recovered above $80, currently quoted at $87.87. Even so, the instrument has not yet returned to a $100 anchor, meaning the market has not fully regained confidence in the stability of the structure.
Meanwhile, drawdowns among longer-term crypto holders became more severe. On June 25, BTC briefly fell to around $59,100, pushing roughly 10.83 million BTC into loss—an all-time high and above the prior bear-market bottom peak of roughly 10.5 million BTC. Long-term holders, defined as those holding for at least 155 days, owned a record 14.8 million BTC at the time, while circulating BTC supply was around 20 million. Of that long-term holder supply, 37% was underwater. More recent data shows long-term holder balances have since risen to 16.61 million BTC, while the average cost basis has declined to around $49,700.
The ETH side also showed clear deterioration. Data from June 26 indicated that ETH whales had moved into loss for the first time since 2019. Even during the 2022 bear market, the largest whales—those holding more than 100,000 ETH—had remained profitable. In the current cycle, however, the unrealized profit ratios of all three major whale cohorts turned negative: -0.26 for 1,000 to 10,000 ETH, -0.21 for 10,000 to 100,000 ETH, and -0.05 for wallets holding more than 100,000 ETH. This condition had persisted for several weeks. Earlier, ETH’s market capitalization briefly dropped below $185 billion, allowing USDT to overtake it. After a rebound above $1,700, ETH’s market cap recovered to roughly $207 billion.
Additional on-chain evidence pointed to capitulation. On June 28, Bitcoin UTXO data showed that the ratio of loss-making spent outputs to profit-making spent outputs had dropped to the lowest level of the current bear cycle, suggesting that investors were entering a clear capitulation phase. A comparable low was last seen in the deep mid-2023 bear market, when BTC briefly traded near $26,000. In other words, the market is now exhibiting classic emotional and behavioral characteristics associated with late-stage bear conditions, even if those signals alone do not guarantee that the ultimate bottom is already in place.
What could mark the end of the bear market: timing views, price zones, and three key confirmation signals
There is still no dominant consensus on exactly when this bear market will end. At the end of June, TrendResearch founder Yi Lihua wrote that the current decline represented the third wave down since “1011” and argued that, based on wave theory and cycle behavior, this could be Bitcoin’s final major leg lower. Using the prior cycle high of $126,000 as a reference, a 60% decline would imply roughly $51,000, while a 66% decline would imply around $43,000. His view was that July to August could represent the final window of the decline and potentially one of the most attractive positioning opportunities of the next three years.
On June 25, BTC mining pool founder Jiang Zhuoer offered a more specific forecast, suggesting that this BTC bear market could bottom on October 31 this year at $44,016. He later adjusted the timing window to October to December 2026 and a bottom range of $42,000 to $44,000, based on the historical pattern that mNAV tends to bottom around 6 months before BTC price itself. His reasoning was tied to Strategy common stock MSTR, whose mNAV—defined as the ratio of market price to BTC value per share—had fallen to 0.72, near the previous cycle low of 0.7 reached on May 11, 2022. But Jiang stressed that an mNAV low does not equal a BTC price low. In the prior cycle, mNAV bottomed at 0.7 when BTC traded at $31,017 on May 11, 2022, while BTC itself did not bottom until November 21, 2022 at $15,476, when mNAV had already recovered to 1.2.
Several market indicators remain important going forward. Coinglass data on Bitcoin’s 4-year average price index showed that between June 25 and June 30, as BTC briefly moved below $59,000, the index fell to 0.95. With BTC later rebounding above $61,000, the index recovered to around 1. Meanwhile, the BTC 200-week moving average heatmap suggests that spot price is now roughly in line with the 200-week average and has remained below that level since June 23, a pattern some traders interpret as a sign that the market may be approaching a bottoming area.
Returning to the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index mentioned at the start, it currently remains at around -0.123%. Based on the previous positive premium range, BTC would likely need to rebound to around $77,000 for the index to have a realistic chance of turning positive again. Taken together, three confirmation signals stand out as especially important for determining whether the bear market is truly ending: whether STRC can re-anchor toward $100, whether long-term BTC and ETH holders can return to aggregate profitability, and whether the Coinbase premium can move back above zero. Without a strong external catalyst, the balance of market opinion cited in this report suggests that the current bear phase could last at least another 2 to 3 months, making late September to early October a key window for judging whether BTC can stage a durable rebound.