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Bitcoin is in a fight.

Not the exciting kind that comes with new all-time highs and euphoric headlines. The kind where the market grinds sideways, tests patience, and makes people wonder if they still want to be here at all.

Today, Bitcoin is trading near prior cycle highs, down roughly 20% on the year and almost 40% below the all-time highs set last October.

For newer investors, that’s painful.

For anyone who’s lived through a few cycles, it feels familiar. Because this is what bear markets do.

I’ve written before about Bitcoin’s four-year market cycles and their relationship to the halving. Nothing says the future has to look exactly like the past, but the last three major cycles all peaked at the same point: roughly 18 months after the halving event.

The most recent halving took place in April 2024. Eighteen months later, the market topped almost right on schedule.

What we’re experiencing now isn’t some new phenomenon. It’s the same post-bull market environment Bitcoin has entered multiple times before. The excitement fades.

Trading volumes slow. Momentum disappears. The market spends months testing the conviction of everyone who showed up during the good times.

It’s not particularly fun.

But it’s also not particularly surprising.

Until we move closer to the next halving in early 2028, Bitcoin will likely rely on external catalysts, macroeconomic shifts, and new sources of liquidity to drive the next major leg higher.

In the meantime, the market chops.

And it waits.

Well… almost nobody.

Bear markets are uncomfortable because they force you to sit with your decisions. When prices are rising, conviction is easy. Every green candle feels like validation.

When prices stop cooperating, that’s when people begin asking themselves why they’re here. Speculators often don’t make it through this phase. Many arrive chasing gains and leave once the gains disappear.

Bitcoiners use the time differently.

A bear market isn’t just a period of lower prices. It’s an opportunity to improve everything around your Bitcoin life. Security. Custody. Savings habits. Allocation strategies. Education. The boring things that don’t get much attention during bull runs suddenly become the things that matter most.

The work that changes your financial future rarely happens when everybody is celebrating. It happens when nobody is paying attention.

Part of what makes this bear market uniquely frustrating is that we’re watching another technology boom unfold in real time.

Artificial intelligence is attracting enormous amounts of capital. Data centers are expanding. Semiconductor demand continues to climb. The infrastructure supporting this new era of computing is being built at a staggering pace.

Look at Dell.

The stock is up more than 300% over the last year and nearly 800% over the last five years. Investors aren’t buying Dell because they suddenly became passionate about enterprise servers. They’re buying exposure to the infrastructure powering the AI boom.

The market is rewarding the builders and facilitators of this technological shift.

I own some Dell myself, so seeing those gains certainly makes the Bitcoin bear market easier to stomach. But the bigger lesson has nothing to do with a single stock.

It’s that we’re witnessing a bifurcated market where capital is aggressively flowing toward long-term technological infrastructure.

And that’s exactly why I remain optimistic about Bitcoin.

AI, data centers, energy infrastructure, advanced networking, and Bitcoin all share a common characteristic: they’re future-focused investments.

The industries supporting them aren’t temporary phenomena. Much of this foundation has existed for decades, dating back to the personal computer revolution and the early internet era. What’s changing now is the scale.

These technologies are becoming increasingly embedded into everyday life. The capital investment surrounding them isn’t disappearing. The buildout isn’t stopping. If anything, it’s accelerating.

There will be winners and losers. There will be booms and busts. Capital will rotate between sectors, companies, and narratives.

But the broader trend remains intact.

I’ve written before that neither AI nor Bitcoin looks like a traditional bubble to me. They look more like foundational technologies working their way into society. The path won’t be smooth, but the long-term direction appears clear.

Sometimes it helps to remember that today’s AI winners spent years building infrastructure before investors fully appreciated what they were creating.

Bitcoin may be going through its own version of that process right now.

During bull markets, everyone focuses on new highs. During bear markets, I prefer to focus on the levels underneath us.

The first is the institutional cost basis range, roughly where large buyers like Strategy and many investors in the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs accumulated their positions.

That’s generally somewhere in the $70,000 to $80,000 range.

Just below that sits an even more important level: the aggregate market cost basis. In simple terms, that’s the average acquisition price of all bitcoins currently held across the network. Today, that figure sits roughly between $55,000 and $60,000.

Historically, levels like these matter because they represent areas where long-term holders begin defending their positions.

They don’t guarantee support, but they often become important battlegrounds during bear markets.

We’ve already come close to testing that zone once this year. Would it surprise me if the market tested it again? Not at all. Bear markets have a habit of revisiting the places that make people uncomfortable.

One thing that changes for me during bear markets is how I think about Bitcoin. When prices are ripping higher and we’re deep into all-time-high territory, I tend to become more selective about adding new exposure. That just means dialing back my recurring buys.

When fear dominates the conversation and sentiment deteriorates, I generally become more interested and tend to dial up recurring buys.

Not because I know where the bottom is.

Nobody does.

But because bear markets are where conviction gets built and value is discovered. They’re where strategies get refined. They’re where security improves.

They’re where people stop obsessing over price and start reconnecting with the reasons they bought Bitcoin in the first place.

Charts will continue doing what charts do.

Headlines will continue demanding attention.

The market will continue throwing punches.

That’s part of the process.

What matters is your time horizon.

Bitcoin’s short-term volatility doesn’t change why many of us arrived here in the first place. The ability to save in an asset with a fixed supply. The ability to hold wealth in a self-sovereign way. The ability to own money that nobody can arbitrarily create more of. Those ideas don’t become less important because the market is having a bad year.

Summer is here.

The bear market is here too.

And if history is any guide, this is the season for building. Not just your stack. Your knowledge. Your security. Your conviction.

Your future self will probably thank you for what you build during the parts of the cycle everyone else tries to ignore.

Thx for reading!

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