The bear market has been the most discussed topic for over a year now. When the crypto market saw its massive uptrend in 2025, fears of a crypto winter remained at the center of discussions.
It still takes center stage months into the actual event. Interestingly, the narrative is no longer about how long it will last, but whether it has ended.
For context, the crypto market saw a massive move last week. As usual, fundamentals were the trigger, and interestingly, there were several positive ones. On August 19, the U.S. President pushed Congress to pass the long-awaited CLARITY Act. His latest urging came after lawmakers failed to pass the bill during the first half of August as planned.
Recall that the Act was designed to establish clearer rules for cryptocurrencies. Hence, investors have eagerly anticipated its passage. The recent position taken by the POTUS suggests that it could be passed swiftly in the coming days, thrilling traders.
Away from the CLARITY Act, the U.S. Treasury Department announced a major change to its nominal long-end liquidity support buyback program. The lot size for the program increased from $2 billion to $4 billion, creating a more favorable environment for heightened risk appetite.
In response to this news, Bitcoin shot up by $4,600 on Wednesday. The global cryptocurrency market cap also gained over 7%. The uptrend continued over the next two days, resulting in an increase of more than 10%.
Cumulatively, the market gained a whopping 22%. The last time it saw anything close to this increase was in November 2024, when it gained over 19%. In light of this massive increase, proponents have shared differing opinions, with some suggesting that the bear market is over.
Ki Young Ju’s Bear Market Prediction
Following the three-day uptrend between Wednesday and Friday, CryptoQuant’s founder stated that the bear market is over. In a post on August 21, he said, “BTC looking strong here. Rallies like this in bear markets usually signal the bottom is in.”
The proponent’s statement was not far from what many other top analysts believe. For example, Darkfost stated on July 18 that the bear market was nearing its end. Following Ju’s post, he agreed that the bottom is in.
The analyst doubled down on his position that the bear market is over. He recently presented the CQ bull-bear market indicator, which indicates that the market has shifted into the early bull regime. Nonetheless, he added a caveat that the metric “is not a perfect signal; it confirms that market conditions have improved significantly.”
Another plausible reason to believe that winter is over comes from Bitcoin Archive. The account posted the image below, showing the 1-month BTC chart. A closer look at the circled section shows a similar candlestick pattern between the end of the 2023 bear market and recent price action.
Paying closer attention to the three candles seen during the 2022/23 cycle, the sequence slightly mimics what was seen over the last three months. There was a long red candle on both occasions, followed by an inverted hammer and a long green candle. It marked the end of the bear market three years ago; it remains to be seen whether history will repeat itself.
Posts featuring this rhetoric have since multiplied, fostering the belief that the bear market is truly over.
Is the Bear Market Over?
Based on the highlighted proponents, the bear market is over. However, it is important to examine other evidence before drawing conclusions.
The first is liquidity. Based on data from CryptoQuant, the market is not receiving a massive inflow of liquidity that corresponds with the recent price hike. Delving deeper, the total market cap of stablecoins began rising between August 13 and 20. Note that the uptrend started on Monday, and as such, the rise in this metric preceded the major surges.
Although the uptrend ended on Friday and resumed on Sunday, there is no established upward move in this metric. This means that current liquidity in the market does not support the ongoing price rise. However, this is not a definitive answer to the question of whether the bear market is over. Instead, it shows that it may be too early to say so.
The second factor to consider is realized price. Over the last two winters, the asset has retested a key level: the long-term holder realized price. For example, in 2018, it dropped below the LTH RP and surged above it a few weeks later, signaling the end of the downtrend.
The same trend occurred during the 2022/23 cycle, when it briefly slipped below the line, leading to a similar outcome. With BTC dropping below the metric during the last two bearish runs, many will expect the same to happen this time.
Based on the realized price model, the bear market is far from over, given that the LTH RP currently sits below $50,000 and the apex coin is yet to retest it.
Previous Bear Market Trends Suggest Otherwise
A previous analysis evaluated past bear runs, noting that BTC posted its bottom an average of 365 days after its all-time high. It cited previous examples of instances where this trend played out.
At the time of writing, the current bear market has only lasted 304 days. Given the trend of the bottom coming roughly one year after the ATH, the bottom is expected to come between September and October. In a nutshell, based on previous trends, the bear run may be nearing its end but has not ended.
Summing it all up, it is too early to conclude that the run is over. September may provide the answers to the critical question of whether the winter is over.
Nonetheless, the chart suggests that one of the levels to watch is $79,000. If Bitcoin holds this key mark through next month, this would signal that the bear market is over. The apex coin would also post a third consecutive month of an uptrend, something unprecedented since the winter started.
