We’re diving into your questions during what is shaping up to be one of the most fascinating stretches of the entire bear market.

Bitcoin has closed below the 200-week moving average for the first time since 2023, we never got the euphoric blow-off top that usually precedes a bear, and half of you are asking the same thing: is it time to back up the truck?

There’s an enormous amount to unpack, so let’s get straight into it.

1. Capitulation Without the Euphoria

Question: This is the part that confuses me. We never got a proper blow-off top. MVRV never hit 3.5, NUPL never got near 0.75. How can we be at a bear market bottom if we never actually peaked?

My Thoughts: This is genuinely the most important structural question in the market right now, and it is dividing even the best analysts.

You are completely correct. The October top around $126K arrived without any of the “classic” euphoric signatures. In every previous cycle, MVRV pushed above 3.5 and NUPL stayed pinned above 0.75 for weeks, warning us of unsustainable greed before the top. This time we crashed into deep fear without ever visiting extreme greed. That asymmetry, capitulation without prior euphoria, is genuinely unprecedented.

The thing is, MVRV and NUPL are really the same metric dressed up differently. Both are built from market value and realised value, and NUPL is just MVRV re-expressed as a percentage, so they move in lockstep. Quoting both as if they were two separate confirmations is just counting one signal twice.

I never rely on one metric alone anyway, and there were plenty of less well-known on-chain signals pointing to a top, such as the extreme amount of LTH selling into the highs. Having said that, when you frame the MVRV in a more interesting way, as a percentile rather than a raw value, you will notice we actually experienced plenty of euphoria this cycle.

The old absolute triggers like 3.5 are relics of a smaller market, and each cycle prints a lower peak. As these cycles continue to mature, reading these classic metrics on a relative basis is going to be critical, and I just don’t think anyone is doing it.

View live in OCM Studio: MVRV Percentile

2. A Different Kind of Bear

Question: This bear feels really different from 2022. Back then Terra and FTX blew up. This time nothing has actually “broken”. Does the absence of a big crypto blow-up change how you expect the recovery to look?

My Thoughts: You have hit on something genuinely important, and I think a lot of people are missing it.

The 2022 bear was a crypto-native solvency crisis. Terra imploded, a cascade of over-leveraged lenders and funds went bust, and finally FTX detonated. The damage was internal and structural, and it destroyed a huge amount of trust and capital that took years to rebuild. That is why the recovery was so slow and grinding.

This time the character is completely different. No major exchange has failed, no significant stablecoin has lost its peg, and the underlying plumbing of the ecosystem is entirely intact. The selling was real, but nothing is fundamentally broken inside crypto.

I actually think this makes for a potentially cleaner and faster recovery. When the damage is macro rather than structural, the cure is also macro. You do not need years to rebuild shattered trust, you simply need the liquidity backdrop to turn towards the sector. The moment the Fed pivots and flows return from AI stocks, there is no lingering solvency wreckage to wade through.

That is a meaningfully more constructive setup than the smouldering ruins of early 2023.

3. Backing Up the Truck?

Question: I use the DCA Channel religiously. Given where we are, is this a “back up the truck” moment you talk about where I should be deploying larger lump sums, or do I stick to my steady daily buys?

My Thoughts: I am really glad you are using the DCA Channel, because these are exactly the conditions it was built for.

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