Bear / Bearish

Being bearish means expecting prices to fall, whether that view applies to a single coin, a sector like DeFi, or the crypto market as a whole. Traders describe themselves, an asset, or a chart pattern as bearish when the balance of evidence points toward further downside rather than a recovery.

The term borrows from traditional finance, where a bear supposedly attacks by swiping its claws downward, in contrast to a bullish bull thrusting its horns upward. A market is formally labeled a bear market once an asset falls roughly 20% or more from a recent high and stays depressed for an extended period, though crypto assets routinely fall much further than that benchmark before bottoming out.

Bitcoin's 2021 to 2022 cycle is a widely cited example: after peaking near $69,000 in November 2021, Bitcoin dropped roughly 77% to around $15,500 a year later, driven by the Terra/LUNA collapse, the Three Arrows Capital and Celsius bankruptcies, and finally the FTX exchange failure, alongside rising interest rates that pushed investors away from risk assets.

Bearish conditions typically show up as falling trading volume, negative social sentiment, declining active-address counts, and a "risk-off" preference for stablecoins over volatile tokens. Extended bear phases in crypto are sometimes nicknamed "crypto winters" because development activity and media attention both cool sharply. Every documented bear market to date has eventually given way to a new bullish cycle, though the timing and depth of each downturn differ.