Now that talking about a bear market has become socially acceptable and almost everyone has realized what’s going on, I have a few things to say about what this cycle has been for Bitcoin, the altseason, and trading in general. Let’s start with Bitcoin, which enjoyed an absurd price action throughout 2024 and 2025, with laughable pullbacks. There was almost always a perma-TWAP from Saylor and various copycats, which made day trading extremely difficult. Positioning long or short based solely on technical analysis or historical data often didn’t work, and the people who understood early that the key was to go with the flow – rather than blindly buying or shorting levels – were the ones who succeeded. The ranging periods were extremely long for this reason. Keeping positions open made little sense, because trends were small, mostly daily or weekly at best, and usually within a 5% range. The only times we had larger uptrends were during the ETF launch and the U.S. election; if we exclude the post-tariff move, even that played out within a range. What do I mean by this? Being a perpetual moonboy didn’t pay for anyone, in either direction. Sure, Bitcoin went from 15k to 126k, but that doesn’t mean much from a trader’s perspective. I’m talking about trading, not about the guy who bought spot and sold above 100k (good for him). As for alts and the famous “altseason” in general: the real altseason happened at the end of 2023 with SEI, SUI, INJ, and so on. From the Solana season onward, the dynamics simply stopped working. The reasons are simple and numerous. First, market participants got smarter. No one believed in technology or narratives anymore; everyone was ready to sell immediately. After CEX listings, the alts that performed well could be counted on one hand. On top of that, teams launched tokens with ultra-greedy tokenomics, which only made things worse. The real altseason took place on-chain, and I’ve always said this. The difference is that instead of liquidity concentrating into a single CEX-listed alt everyone believed in, we got a hundred memes topping at 200M market cap or slightly more. No coin managed to generate true FOMO: the higher the market cap, the less people wanted to buy. Derivatives and other products started appearing instantly, each topping lower and lower. In fact, the ones that performed best were the early ones – PEPE, BONK, WIF – before this effect kicked in. So yes, altseasons did happen: small, brief, centered around single narratives, and mostly on-chain, in a market with increasingly efficient participants who basically neutralized the effect. CEX listings almost always marked the top of anything. Now things are likely to get worse. Not only has the Saylor-style perma-TWAP buy disappeared, but a perma-TWAP sell is starting from all the accumulators who bought the top. We saw this for the first time this week. Throughout the entire cycle we never had more than 4–6 consecutive red candles without relief; now the opposite is happening. I obviously don’t know what the next catalyst for Bitcoin will be. I think it might be stock tokenization, which could strongly push a new cycle. But until then, there are a lot of people who need to sell very quickly. That said, I’m taking two big lessons with me. First: don’t go against the flow. In practical terms, the flow is well captured by EMAs. The 5-minute 15 EMA was often the perfect indicator of the intraday TWAP; losing it was a clean short entry. Lately it’s the 15-minute 15 EMA that’s identifying the perma-TWAP sell, along with the usual 5-minute one. You can check it yourself. In any case, and this is a reminder to myself too, the dumbest thing you can do is fight the flow. Or rather: you can go against it, but only when it’s actually ending. Even if you’ve identified a level that should work, you still need the patience to wait for the flow to stop. Second:👇

Second: now that IBIT exists and Bitcoin trades like an institutional asset with extremely tight ranges, it makes more sense to close and reopen positions daily. Especially when the NYSE is closed. During the Asian session or on weekends, we saw movements amplified precisely because the institutional bid was missing, often triggered by news or presidential statements. Now the opposite is happening: IBIT is selling aggressively, and you can only go counter-trend during the Asian session more or less, or at least you need to factor in that if a move happened during that session, most participants are out of position. With that said: invert chart.

One more thing: this post could very well mark a local bottom, but that doesn’t mean anything and it doesn’t invalidate anything I’ve said. I’m saying it now simply because before, it wasn’t socially acceptable to say it.