Bull Markets, Bear Markets, and What They Mean for You
Published 5 August 2026
Crypto moves in long cycles. Knowing which part you are in will not tell you what happens next, but it explains a great deal about how everyone around you is behaving.
Bull market
Prices rise over months. New people arrive. Coverage turns positive. Everyone seems to be making money and saying so.
The danger is that it feels easy. Buy anything, it goes up, and you conclude you are skilled. This is when people increase position sizes, add leverage, and buy things they do not understand โ because recent evidence says it works.
Bear market
Prices fall for months, sometimes years. Volume dries up. The people who were loudest disappear. Genuine projects and worthless ones fall together.
The danger is capitulation โ selling at the bottom because it feels like it will never end. It always feels that way. That feeling is what makes the bottom.
The emotional cycle
Optimism, excitement, euphoria, anxiety, denial, panic, capitulation, depression, hope, and back to optimism. Every cycle. The assets change, the emotions do not.
Knowing where you are on that list is more useful than any indicator, because your worst decisions come from the extremes.
What to actually do
In a bull market: take some profit on the way up. Not everything โ some. Nobody sells the exact top, and waiting for it is how gains become memories. Resist increasing risk simply because things are going well.
In a bear market: this is when accumulating works, if you have the patience. Keep buying your schedule. Learn things. Assume the recovery takes longer than you expect, because it usually does.
In both: only hold what you can hold through the other one. If a 70% drop would force you to sell, the position is too large now.
The thing nobody can do
Call the top or the bottom. Not analysts, not influencers, not anyone with a paid group. Anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. Plan for both directions instead of predicting one.