Led by Bitcoin (BTC), cryptocurrencies are now opening a new page. This week, investors were filled with pessimism and Bitcoin’s steep decline was the straw that broke the camel’s back after months of dull action. So, is this decline really as bad for cryptocurrencies as it seems?
The Worst for Cryptocurrencies
We have seen Bitcoin price stuck in a narrow range for the last 3 months. These are the days when good news triggers fire-like movements and bad news brings rapid declines to the bottom of the range. Cryptocurrencies were already going to be in such a squeeze as a result of high leverage last year. We remember that especially in the second half of 2025, many experts said that the market would be stuck due to high leverage and this would need to be cleared.
Above you see the tight narrow gap movement. Although it may seem like a small period on the chart, it continued for 78 days from November 14 to January 31. For Bitcoin, such periods naturally result in a break. While investors were waiting for the 98 thousand dollars to be broken on January 14 and the break to be upwards, the bottom of the range was broken on January 31 and here we are today.
First of all, we can say that the 78-day sideways movement above 81 thousand dollars, especially for altcoins, is no less painful than today for altcoins. While high leverage was cleared after October 10, liquidity in the market was also dried up, and while interest in silver, gold, and ai shares increased, crypto could not find the fuel it needed.
We Had a Story of Ascension and It Rising
At the end of 2024, Trump won the elections and cryptocurrencies had a new story to rise. With altcoin ETFs, regulations, acceleration of institutional adoption, and the US crypto reserve move, everyone was sure that we were now moving to the next stage. And so it was. From late 2024 to last year’s ATH, Bitcoin rose 86% in 336 days.
This was not a big enough summit for some. However, as Bitcoin’s price (and therefore market cap) grew from cycle to cycle, the cycle gain was declining as a percentage. In 2023, when it was still unclear whether Trump would be elected or anything else, the level we pointed to when we talked about “looking to the future with hope” was 120 thousand dollars. We mentioned that the $69,000 peak would be the sweet spot in the next cycle relative to the earnings rate of the previous cycle peaks. And so it was.
South Koreans Gave the Signal
So what happened next? We had a good story for the rise in 2025. We priced these, and many altcoins that had a solid foundation and convinced their investors also saw good peaks between the end of 2024 and the end of 2025. However, in 2025, with the motivation of “future’s money, internet, financial infrastructure”, cryptocurrencies The “AI bubble” has emerged, which has become something to compete with. Also last year, we mentioned that South Korean investors were moving away from crypto to invest in big AI and related companies in their country.
“South Korean investors started to move away from cryptocurrencies in 2025. Volumes dropped by 80 percent.
AI enthusiasm has fueled the unparalleled performance of SK hynix and Samsung Electronics. Koreans are rushing to stocks. “The companies that dominate the HBM (high bandwidth memory) market have far outperformed cryptocurrencies.” – (The South Koreans Are Gone: The Most Appetitive Investors Flee Cryptocurrencies)
South Korean investors went with AI. We know that US investors have been sellers for a long time (which is what we are talking about with Coinbase Premium). Turkish investors are exhausted by massive liquidations. Gold and Silver altcoins Its unprecedented rise caused a significant amount of capital to shift here, so the commodity rally further dried up the already decreasing liquidity in crypto.
We have been taking the last big blows for about 3 months with the liquidation of tens of billions of dollars of longs. When we combine all these, we can understand how normal the losses experienced by cryptocurrencies these days are.
- Investors are fleeing.
- Liquidity is drying up.
We Need a New Story
Just examine the marked area on the chart between January 2021 and January 2024. There are approximately 1160 days between them. However, after a thousand days, the market repeats itself. In those months in between, investors were caught up in short and medium-term fluctuations and were wasted by the expectation of either further rises or further declines.
Then, as if the decline between 15 November 2021 and 24 January 2022 was not enough Bitcoin It was battered by VC bankruptcies. After the Terra bankruptcy, Circle etc., we made the finale with the FTX collapse, as we all remember. There are approximately 1000 days between the FTX crash and last year’s peak, during which BTC increased by 650%.
FTX crash It was something that meant that everything was over for many investors, but if you examine the chart, you will see that the market got rid of the hump on its back and began to rise steadily after this date.
Remember the mood of that day.
- Democrats say cryptocurrencies should be banned.
- In 2021, experts (!) who preach decentralization and crypto innovation philosophy as if they were Satoshi’s roommates, are sharing “now it’s over crypto fraud, I’m switching to stocks.”
- Stock exchanges are facing bankruptcies, and many exchanges that are standing today are calculating how they can withstand the bankrun in those days.
- Bitcoin 14 thousand dollars targets are flying in the air.
- We now see accounts with tens of thousands of followers waiting for Bitcoin to go to zero as the previous ATH top cannot be maintained as support.
The list goes on and on, but when you go back a thousand days from that day, maybe you will see the same people saying BTC will be 200 thousand dollars. If you come to today, 133 days after the summit, you will see that 30 thousand dollars are being talked about.
Crypto is a place that repeats itself every day and we are experiencing the same things again. You are trading in a market full of speculative and mostly useless tokens, filled with investors who are too fearful on fear and too FOMO on the rise.
The most valuable thing is experience, and if you don’t learn from your experiences, you will continue to be one of the biggest losers in crypto. Looking at the market and today from a broader perspective will help you to be better prepared for the future.
Today, cryptocurrencies need a new story, but this will not be written in one day (2025, 2021, 2017 etc. all had a story of rise). By that day, we may see Bitcoin drop to $50,000 or maybe even lower. What matters is where Bitcoin can reach in the next thousand days, not today.
End – Price is Relative
If you look at it from 2017, 20 thousand dollars for Bitcoin is like a dream. If you are looking at the end of 2020, it gives you hopes of great profits. If you are looking at the beginning of 2021, you will say, “Oh no, the rise is over now, this is it.” If you are looking at the middle of 2021, you will say, “Elon Musk is a trouble for us, I wish he would die and his FUD would end.” For you, 20 thousand dollars in December 2021 is like a target that the BTC price will never reach. During the 2022 FTX crash, $20,000 seems like a resistance that can never be overcome. In 2023, you will see it as a level that BTC will never see again. in 2024 of Bitcoin You don’t even dream that it is 20 thousand dollars because months have passed and the days of FTX crash and FUD rain are behind us.
20 thousand dollars is still 20 thousand dollars, but your perspective on it as “Bitcoin price” constantly changes depending on time and market conditions. Just like you couldn’t sleep for joy when you saw 55 thousand dollars on February 5, the same day of 2021, and today you lost your sleep wondering “Will the price hit there at the Asian market opening?”
Price is relative, but this may be the case for Bitcoin, perhaps with the exception of Ethereum. The price is not relative for the altcoin, which unlocks tokens and continues to sell them despite a 98% drop in the markets in order to survive and pay salaries to its team. Meme is not for coins. It is not just for the altcoin that had the wind behind it because it caught the hype in the conditions of that day and you still couldn’t part with it that day. It goes on and on, but the price for these is not relative because it has the potential to go to zero, and this risk is not negligible.
It may be good for you to watch the Bitcoin chart open monthly to look to the future with hope. However, the better thing would be to “not invest with debt” and “not fill your entire portfolio with useless tokens”. Maybe 1 out of 10 altcoins you bought today thinking it was at the bottom may reach 40x in a thousand days. But probably 9 of them will approach zero and will be delisted by mainstream exchanges. Investing knowing this possibility, maintaining the weight of Bitcoin in your portfolio, purchasing without borrowing, and investing by researching good projects sufficiently will keep you comfortable in difficult thousand-day processes.
Of course this is it cryptocurrencies And the probability that even Bitcoin’s price will one day go to zero is never zero. This is where the high-risk, high-reward logic comes from, because we are talking about a 17-year-old “thing” that is trying to rise to the same class as asset classes that are thousands of years old (gold, silver, etc.).
