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Bitcoin’s latest bear market," the one during which the cryptocurrency lost 25.5% of its value in weeks since October, has triggered a fresh wave of arguments about whether the market is still following the familiar cyclical pattern that defined every major move from 2013 through 2021.
According to CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju, the answer is no because the mechanism that created those clean cycles for Bitcoin has been overshadowed by something entirely different — a constant inflow of institutional liquidity that refuses to let the market behave the way it used to before all the ETFs and "treasury" companies.
For Ju, the current dip is not a panic, nor a macro-shock, but a rotation event among long-term holders — the kind where old whales offload into new buyers who are not here for a quick return but for the multiyear allocation window.
He sees it as OG Bitcoiners selling to traditional-finance players, who can sit through volatility without blinking, so price drops no longer act as cycle resets but as temporary fluctuations absorbed by "bigger fish."
New "old" Bitcoin story
Interestingly, Ju called a Bitcoin top earlier this year, which he now explains by the original whales dumping aggressively. Yet the market refused to collapse because ETFs, Strategy's and its clones' constant acquisition loop, and new inflow corridors, kept filling the demand side for Bitcoin with fresh capital at a pace that neutralized the exits.
In his view, the latest plunge is the same story: Bitcoin’s old guard pushing supply into a structure that no longer cracks under pressure.
Sovereign funds, pension funds, multiasset desks and corporate treasuries are now building what he calls "even bigger liquidity channels," and as long as these pipelines stay active, the classic cycle model is dead.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team