From May 19 to July 3, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index stayed negative for 46 straight days, the longest negative streak since the indicator was introduced. The previous record was 40 consecutive days between January 16 and February 24 this year, and even that exceeded the roughly 30-day stretch seen during the “10/11 crash” last year. With BTC at one point breaking below $58,000 and ETH falling under $1,600, the central market question has shifted from whether a rebound is possible to how far the current crypto bear market is from an actual end.
This decline has not been driven by a single catalyst. Instead, it reflects a layered tightening of conditions across the market: crypto-related equities came under pressure, spot Bitcoin ETFs continued to see capital outflows, major assets lost key long-term technical levels, and on-chain loss metrics worsened. In the absence of a strong external bullish catalyst, traders have increasingly moved away from “buy the dip” assumptions and toward a framework centered on bear market confirmation and balance-sheet stress.
Strategy’s BTC sale and ETF outflows became the key trigger for the latest sell-off
In late May and early June, Strategy, the largest corporate BTC treasury company and one of the most important crypto-linked listed names, sold BTC again for the first time in three years. The size of the transaction was tiny in absolute terms, only 32 BTC, but the symbolic effect was outsized. In an already fragile market, participants quickly interpreted the move as evidence that even the most committed treasury holder might need to sell into weakness. That psychological shift helped intensify selling pressure across BTC, ETH, SOL, and other major assets.
At the same time, spot Bitcoin ETF flows deteriorated materially. During the first week of June, Bitcoin briefly fell below $60,000 and posted its worst weekly performance since the collapse of FTX in 2022. As of June 7, BTC had dropped 16% over the previous seven days and had retraced more than 50% from its 2025 all-time high above $126,000. On the demand side, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had already recorded 13 consecutive trading days of net outflows, with cumulative outflows of around $5.5 billion.
Just as importantly, BTC also fell below the 200-week moving average, a level widely viewed as a major long-term support zone. Paul Howard, a senior executive at crypto trading company Wincent, described the environment as a “silent bear market,” arguing that losing the 200-week moving average was an important confirmation that the market had entered a bearish phase. Although BTC later rebounded toward $65,000, several analysts warned that the move might not be sustainable. Griffin Ardern, co-founder of Primal Fund, said the market likely remained a considerable distance from a “true bottom.”
From a market psychology perspective, this was a pivotal shift. In May, many investors still expected a large BTC rebound. Strategy’s decision to sell, even in a very small amount, effectively broke one of the last remaining confidence anchors for bullish positioning. That is why the event mattered far beyond the transaction size itself.
How institutions are framing the bottom: $53,600 realized price versus a 2026 World Cup tail-end thesis
On June 11, CryptoQuant argued that Bitcoin could form a bottom around $53,600, which corresponds to the current realized price, or the average on-chain cost basis of all market participants. The firm noted that in previous major bear cycles, Bitcoin often bottomed near realized price or slightly below it. This framework focuses less on short-term momentum and more on aggregate cost structure across the network.
On June 12, BIT published a weekly report titled Will the FIFA World Cup Become the End of Bitcoin’s Bear Market? and maintained a longer-dated cyclical view. According to BIT, the current bear market remains broadly consistent with its early February 2026 outlook. The previously projected A-B-C corrective structure has now entered its final phase: wave A declined into the $60,000 to $69,000 range, BTC then rebounded into the $80,000 to $90,000 zone, peaked near $83,000, and has since seen weakening rebound momentum.
BIT also noted that the Fear and Greed Index has moved close to historically meaningful low zones and that the current structure still shows similarities to the 2022 bear market bottom. On that basis, the firm maintained its view that the summer trading lull during the 2026 FIFA World Cup could mark the late-stage ending phase of this bear cycle.
On June 17, K33 offered a more constructive interpretation based on supply structure. It said the amount of Bitcoin held by long-term holders had reached an all-time high, suggesting the bear market might be nearing its conclusion. K33 highlighted that old coin reactivation in 2026 had been notably 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 view, lower old coin activity suggests long-term holders are less willing to sell and that patient capital continues to absorb supply. However, the subsequent decline in BTC price quickly undermined market confidence in that thesis.
STRC de-pegging and expanding long-term holder losses made the bear market stress more visible
If the sale of 32 BTC by Strategy represented a psychological trigger, the sustained dislocation in its preferred stock STRC turned market stress into something more concrete. On June 18, after having already fallen below $95 earlier in the month, STRC closed at $89, its lowest daily close since the IPO and its lowest dividend-adjusted close since November last year. The situation worsened on June 26, when STRC dropped to $73 in premarket trading, marking a new all-time low.
At that point, market attention focused on two issues. First was the June 30 ex-dividend date, with eligible holders set to receive a $0.48 per-share distribution on July 15. Second was the expected monthly dividend reset. With STRC’s effective yield nearing 15%, investors expected Strategy to raise the dividend rate from 11.50% to at least 12% or 12.50% in order to stabilize pricing.
Three days later, on June 29, Strategy announced a $1 billion digital credit securities repurchase plan and also unveiled a board-approved BTC monetization program of up to $1.25 billion. With additional financing measures, the company’s U.S. dollar reserves rose to $2.55 billion, improving its ability to service dividends on preferred shares such as STRC. The discount crisis eased temporarily, and STRC recovered back above $80, most recently around $87.87. Still, the episode left the market focused on the fragility of leverage-linked crypto balance sheets.
On-chain data also reflected a sharp increase in stress. On June 25, as Bitcoin briefly fell to around $59,100, the number of BTC sitting at a loss climbed to 10.83 million coins, the highest level on record and above the roughly 10.5 million seen near prior bear-market bottoms. Long-term holders, defined here as addresses holding for at least 155 days, controlled a record 14.8 million BTC at that time, and 37% of that supply was underwater. The latest figures show long-term holder supply has increased further to 16.61 million BTC, while their average cost basis has declined to roughly $49,700.
Ethereum showed similar signs of strain. Data from June 26 indicated that ETH whales had moved into losses for the first time since 2019. Even during the 2022 bear market, the largest whale cohort, those holding more than 100,000 ETH, remained profitable. Now all three major whale categories are in negative unrealized profit territory: holders with 1,000 to 10,000 ETH are at -0.26, those with 10,000 to 100,000 ETH are at -0.21, and those with more than 100,000 ETH are at -0.05. This condition has persisted for weeks. Earlier, ETH’s market capitalization had briefly fallen below $185 billion and was overtaken by USDT before recovering to about $207 billion as ETH rebounded above $1,700.
Has a buy-the-dip signal appeared? Watch UTXO stress, the 4-year average price index, and Coinbase premium
On June 28, Bitcoin UTXO data showed that the ratio of loss-realizing transactions to profit-realizing transactions had fallen to the lowest level of the current bear cycle. That indicates investors are entering a clear capitulation phase. The last comparable low occurred during the deep mid-2023 bear market phase, when BTC fell to around $26,000. While such readings are useful for identifying emotional extremes, they do not necessarily imply an immediate price reversal.
From a valuation and technical perspective, several indicators are moving closer to historically important bottom regions. According to Coinglass, the BTC 4-year average price index dropped to 0.95 between June 25 and June 30 as Bitcoin briefly broke below $59,000. With BTC rebounding back above $61,000, the index has now recovered to around 1.0. Meanwhile, the BTC 200-week moving average heatmap shows that spot price is now roughly in line with the 200-week average, and BTC has remained below that level since June 23. Historically, such behavior has often coincided with late-stage bottoming zones.
However, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index mentioned at the start of the article remains a major source of caution. It is still hovering around -0.123%. Based on prior positive-premium ranges, BTC may need to rebound toward roughly $77,000 for the indicator to turn positive again. In other words, even if valuation and on-chain metrics begin to hint at a bottoming process, real spot demand from the U.S. market has not yet confirmed it.
Bottom timing remains highly disputed, with late September to early October as the key observation window
There is still no market consensus on when the bear market will end. In late June, TrendResearch founder Yi Lihua argued that the current move represents the third leg down since “1011,” and that under wave theory and historical cycle behavior, this could be the final major decline of the current market. Using BTC’s peak above $126,000 as the reference point, a 60% drawdown would imply roughly $51,000, while a 66% drawdown would imply about $43,000. In his view, July to August could represent the final downside time window and potentially one of the most attractive deployment periods of the next three years.
On June 25, BTC.TOP founder Jiang Zhuoer offered a more explicit scenario. He predicted that the current BTC bear market could bottom on October 31 of this year at $44,016. When incorporating the pattern in which mNAV tends to bottom about six months before BTC price itself, he revised the likely final bottoming window to October through December 2026, with a target range of $42,000 to $44,000. His core logic is that MSTR’s mNAV, defined as the ratio of its share price to the BTC value per share, has already fallen to 0.72, close to the previous cycle low of 0.7 recorded on May 11, 2022.
Jiang also emphasized that an mNAV bottom does not necessarily coincide with the BTC price bottom. In the previous cycle, mNAV bottomed at 0.7 on May 11, 2022, when BTC was at $31,017, but Bitcoin itself did not bottom until November 21, 2022, at $15,476, at which point mNAV had risen back to 1.2. The gap between the two bottoms was about six months. That historical pattern is why some observers think current equity-linked stress may be early rather than final.
Putting the evidence together, the most useful framework is not to anchor on one exact price level but to monitor several structural signals at the same time. These include whether STRC can re-anchor toward $100, whether long-term BTC and ETH holders can move back into aggregate profit, and whether the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index can finally break its negative streak. Without a strong external upside catalyst, the current bear market is likely to persist for at least another two to three months. That makes late September to early October a critical window for determining whether BTC can transition from bear-market stabilization to a more durable rebound.