Across on-chain indicators, institutional positioning, and the performance of crypto-linked securities, the market continues to display the traits of a full bear-market regime. According to Coinglass, the Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index stayed negative for 46 consecutive days from May 19 to July 3, setting a new record for the longest negative streak since the indicator was introduced. For context, the previous record came earlier this year, when the index remained negative for 40 straight days from January 16 to February 24, while the selloff during the “10/11 crash” last year produced roughly 30 consecutive days of negative premium. The persistence of a negative premium implies that U.S.-based spot demand has remained weak and that confidence has recovered far more slowly than in prior episodes of market stress.
Price action tells a similar story. BTC briefly fell below $58,000, while ETH slipped under $1,600, breaking through levels that many traders had been watching as both psychological and technical support. At this point, the key question for the market is no longer whether the sector is in a bear phase, but how far the cycle still has to run before a durable bottom can form. The available data points toward an environment where isolated stabilization signals exist, yet broad consensus on a market bottom is still missing.
The Main Trigger: Strategy’s BTC Sale and Persistent ETF Outflows
In late May and early June, Strategy, the largest BTC treasury company and a flagship crypto-related stock, sold Bitcoin again for the first time in three years. The transaction involved only 32 BTC, but its symbolic impact was much larger than its size. The sale quickly fed market anxiety and was widely interpreted as the event that broke the final layer of bullish conviction. BTC, ETH, SOL, and other large-cap crypto assets fell sharply soon after. Combined with continued net outflows from spot Bitcoin ETFs and ongoing capital depletion across the broader crypto market, the episode helped reinforce the sense that the industry had moved decisively into a bearish 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 declined 16% over the prior seven days and had retraced more than 50% from its 2025 all-time high above $126,000. At the same time, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded 13 consecutive trading days of net outflows, totaling about $5.5 billion. More importantly from a market structure perspective, Bitcoin also dropped below the 200-week moving average, a level widely regarded as a major long-term bull-bear dividing line. That breach further damaged investor confidence.
Paul Howard, a senior executive at crypto trading firm Wincent, described the current phase as a “silent bear market,” arguing that the breakdown below the 200-week moving average served as an important confirmation signal. Although BTC later bounced back toward $65,000, several analysts warned that the rebound might not be sustainable. Griffin Ardern, co-founder of Primal Fund, said that the market was still a considerable distance away from the “true bottom.” In narrative terms, Strategy’s sale marked the point at which hopes for a fast and forceful rebound began to fade.
Bottom Calls Diverge: Realized Price, A-B-C Structure, and the World Cup Thesis
On June 11, CryptoQuant said Bitcoin could form a bottom near $53,600. The firm’s reasoning centered on realized price, the average on-chain cost basis of all market participants. In past major bear cycles, BTC has often bottomed around realized price or slightly below it. This framework focuses less on short-term price action and more on where aggregate on-chain ownership costs may act as a gravitational zone for capitulation and re-accumulation.
On June 12, BIT published a weekly report titled “Will the FIFA World Cup Mark the End of Bitcoin’s Bear Market?” In that report, BIT argued that Bitcoin’s current decline was broadly consistent with a scenario it had laid out in early February 2026. According to BIT, the previously anticipated A-B-C corrective structure had entered its final phase: wave A sent BTC into the $60,000 to $69,000 range, then a rebound carried it into the $80,000 to $90,000 area, where the market appeared to top near $83,000 before upside momentum gradually weakened.
BIT also noted that the Fear & Greed Index had approached historically important low levels and that the current pattern still showed structural similarities to the 2022 bear-market bottom. The firm maintained its view that the summer trading lull during the 2026 FIFA World Cup could coincide with the final stage of the current bear market. A more constructive signal came from K33 on June 17. The research company argued that the total BTC supply held by long-term holders had reached a record high, suggesting the market could be approaching the end of its bearish phase. K33 highlighted that old-coin reactivation remained unusually subdued in 2026: as of June 6, only 218,421 BTC had been reactivated, versus 1.18 million BTC during the same period in 2024. In K33’s view, declining old-coin activity implied reduced selling willingness among long-term holders and ongoing supply absorption by patient capital.
However, the market’s subsequent decline quickly undermined these more optimistic bottoming narratives. In other words, while on-chain and sentiment indicators briefly hinted that BTC might be nearing a floor, price action failed to confirm the thesis, and the market continued moving along a weaker path.
STRC Dislocation and Expanding Holder Losses Kept Pressure Elevated
On June 18, after already dropping below $95 earlier in the month, Strategy’s preferred stock STRC fell under $90 and closed at $89, the lowest daily close since its IPO and the weakest dividend-adjusted close since last November. The decline continued, and on June 26 the stock traded as low as $73 in pre-market action, setting a new all-time low. Investor attention then focused on two immediate issues: the June 30 ex-dividend date, under which eligible holders would receive $0.48 per share on July 15, and the monthly dividend-rate reset.
At that time, STRC’s effective yield had approached 15%, and many investors expected Strategy to raise the dividend rate from 11.50% to at least 12% or 12.50%. On June 29, Strategy announced a $1 billion digital credit securities repurchase plan and also introduced a board-approved Bitcoin monetization plan of up to $1.25 billion. With multiple financing programs underway, the company’s U.S. dollar reserves rose to $2.55 billion, strengthening its ability to service payments on preferred shares including STRC. That helped temporarily ease the discount crisis, and STRC rebounded above $80, with the latest price cited at $87.87.
Yet stabilization in Strategy-linked securities did not immediately improve the unrealized P&L picture for on-chain holders. On June 25, Bitcoin fell to roughly $59,100, and the number of BTC held at a loss reached 10.83 million coins, a record high. That exceeded the prior bear-market peak of around 10.5 million BTC. Long-term holders, defined here as those holding for at least 155 days, owned a record 14.8 million BTC, and 37% of that cohort was underwater. The latest figures cited in the article show long-term holdings rising further to 16.61 million BTC, while the average cost basis for that group declined to around $49,700.
Ethereum displayed a similarly stressed picture. Data from June 26 showed that ETH whales had fallen into aggregate loss for the first time since 2019. Even during the 2022 bear market, the largest whales holding more than 100,000 ETH had remained profitable. At present, three major whale bands all had negative unrealized profit ratios: -0.26 for wallets holding 1,000 to 10,000 ETH, -0.21 for the 10,000 to 100,000 ETH range, and -0.05 for wallets above 100,000 ETH. This condition had already persisted for several weeks. Earlier, as ETH kept falling, its market capitalization briefly dropped below $185 billion and was overtaken by USDT. With price later recovering above $1,700, ETH’s market cap rebounded to around $207 billion.
Capitulation Signals Are Visible, but Confirmation Is Still Missing
Bitcoin UTXO data dated June 28 showed that the ratio of loss-making transactions to profit-taking transactions had fallen to the lowest point of this bear-market cycle, suggesting that investors were entering a clear capitulation phase. The previous comparable low occurred during the deep portion of the 2023 mid-cycle bear market, when BTC briefly traded near $26,000. Signals like this often indicate that forced selling and emotional exhaustion are becoming widespread, but they do not automatically mean that a final price bottom has already been secured.
The article identifies at least two practical categories of confirmation signals for the end of the bear market. The first concerns Strategy-related market stress: whether STRC can re-anchor toward $100 and whether the broader discount dynamics around the company’s capital structure continue to normalize. The second concerns on-chain profitability: whether long-term BTC and ETH holders can move out of widespread losses. Without those conditions, any rebound is more likely to be interpreted as a bear-market recovery rally rather than a full trend reversal.
The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index remains another key gauge. At the time discussed in the article, the indicator was still at -0.123%. Based on prior periods when the premium returned to positive territory, BTC would likely need to rally toward roughly $77,000 for the index to turn positive again. That implies the U.S. spot market has not yet shown a convincing return of structural demand, leaving any recovery vulnerable to fading.
The Most Important Window May Be Late September to Early October
There is still no dominant market consensus on the exact timing of the bear-market bottom. In late June, TrendResearch founder Yi Lihua wrote that the current decline represented the third leg down since “1011” and argued that, under wave theory and broader cycle logic, this could be Bitcoin’s final major drop. Taking Bitcoin’s peak above $126,000 as the reference, a 60% decline would imply about $51,000, while a 66% decline would imply about $43,000. Yi argued that July to August could be the final phase of weakness and also the best dip-buying window, potentially offering one of the most attractive opportunities of the next three years.
On June 25, Jiang Zhuoer, founder of the Lubian mining pool, offered a more detailed timing model. He first projected that the current BTC bear market could bottom at $44,016 on October 31 this year. He then revised the timing window to October to December 2026, with an expected price range of $42,000 to $44,000, based on the historical pattern of mNAV bottoming roughly six months ahead of BTC itself. His reasoning was that the mNAV of Strategy common stock MSTR — defined as share price divided by BTC value per share — had already fallen to 0.72, close to the 0.7 low seen on May 11, 2022. However, he emphasized that the bottom in mNAV does not necessarily coincide with the bottom in Bitcoin. In the prior cycle, mNAV bottomed at 0.7 on May 11, 2022, when BTC traded at $31,017, but Bitcoin itself did not bottom until November 21, 2022, at $15,476, about six months later, when mNAV had rebounded to 1.2.
Other indicators provide partial support for the idea that the market may be approaching a late-stage bear zone. Coinglass data on Bitcoin’s 4-year average price index showed that between June 25 and June 30, the index dropped to 0.95 as BTC briefly fell below $59,000. As Bitcoin later moved back above $61,000, the index recovered to around 1. Separately, the 200-week moving-average heatmap showed that BTC had remained below the 200-week average since June 23, while the spot price is now roughly aligned with that long-term benchmark. That may suggest the market is near a bottoming area, though not yet definitively through it.
Putting these signals together, the most cautious conclusion remains that the current bear market is unlikely to end immediately unless a strong external catalyst appears. The article’s synthesis is that the downturn will probably continue for at least another two to three months. Under that framework, late September to early October may become the key period for judging whether BTC can truly exit its bear-market structure. A sustained recovery in spot demand, continued normalization in STRC pricing, and a clear improvement in long-term holder profitability would all strengthen the case that a broader trend reversal is finally underway.