Recently, I noticed a very interesting market phenomenon. Asset management firm Bitwise pointed out in their analysis that the crypto market has been in a full bear cycle since the beginning of last year, but most people have been reluctant to admit it.

Think about it, the prices have indeed fallen sharply over the past year. Bitcoin has dropped nearly 40% from its October 2025 high, Ethereum's decline is over 50%, and many mainstream tokens have performed even worse. According to current market conditions, BTC is around 74K, and ETH has fallen nearly 3% again in the past 24 hours.

Interestingly, Bitwise's Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan mentioned that this is not a normal correction or healthy pullback, but real bear market pressure. But there's a detail worth noting: a large influx of institutional funds into spot Bitcoin ETFs and digital asset bond services has helped some large, institution-friendly assets stay relatively stable. As a result, retail tokens without ETF or bond demand support have often fallen by 60% or more.

According to Bitwise's estimates, institutions have bought over 740k Bitcoin during this period, which suggests that hundreds of billions of dollars in price support may have prevented even larger declines. In other words, the surface data masks the true difficulties faced by retail investors.

But there's a key observation: Bitwise believes this bear cycle may be nearing its end. Historically, crypto bear markets tend to end in despair and exhaustion rather than in a rebound fueled by optimism. When sellers finally run out of steam and the market stabilizes, a new expansion phase begins. Looking at previous cycles (2018 and 2022), this process takes about 13 months, and since this cycle started last year, it’s already quite close in terms of timing.

Even more interestingly, Bitwise points out that the fundamentals haven't actually worsened. Regulatory momentum, Wall Street acceptance, stablecoins, and tokenization are all continuing to advance; the market just isn't paying attention at the moment. Once these positive factors accumulate and sentiment shifts, a strong rebound could be triggered. So, the most despairing moment right now might actually be the closest to a turning point.