Bear or Bull? Answering the most expensive question in Bitcoin

Welcome to The Roundup. Each week, we use Bitcoin to examine a broader question about capital, risk, and ownership. Not where the market is headed or what the headlines are saying. Instead, we review the structural forces that separate durable wealth from temporary gains.

This week, we're asking a simple question: has Bitcoin's bear market ended?

The Roundup is the newsletter from Rhino — the Bitcoin-only app to buy, hold, and borrow against your Bitcoin, with no rehypothecation.

Good morning, Bitcoiners.

We’ve got quite the confluence of factors on our hands: six straight weeks of ETF outflows, a new hawkish Fed chair, oil prices falling, and Iran talks that are signalling a potential end to the war. 

All of it forces one question: is the bear market turning around, or just resting? Bitcoin trades near $63,000, down about 5% on the week.

Let’s take both sides seriously.

The bull case is real. ETF outflows shrank to $230 million from $1.7 billion over the past two weeks, suggesting the selling is slowing. Oil prices are also falling, taking some pressure off inflation. One research desk described capital as no longer fleeing but “gradually repositioning.” If you want to see a bottom forming, the evidence is there.

The bear case, however, is just as real. New Fed chair Kevin Warsh is signalling a hard line on inflation, the two-year Treasury yield just hit a multi-month high, and core inflation is expected to tick up. Higher-for-longer rates are a headwind for every risk asset, Bitcoin included. If you want to see more pain ahead, that evidence is there too.

Yet there’s another strategy that lets you avoid trying to figure out where the market is headed entirely.

Dollar-cost averaging, or DCA, is where you buy a fixed amount on a set schedule and ignore the headlines entirely. Rhino users can set up recurring Bitcoin purchases in minutes and avoid the temptation to time every market move. Explore AUTO-DCA.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about where the market is: both cases are genuinely strong. That means anyone who confidently tells you which one wins is guessing. In fact, most investors think they need to know where the market is headed before they can act.

Bull market? Buy. Bear market? Wait.

But by the time the answer becomes obvious, the opportunity usually has passed. The real risk was never getting the cycle wrong. 

It’s building a position that only works if your forecast is right.

The investor who needs to call it is the vulnerable one because they tend to be leveraged, overallocated, and dependent on being right. A wrong guess can easily become a margin call they can’t sit through. But the investor who doesn’t need to call it is built differently. 

Their position doesn’t require the market to cooperate.

That’s the quiet skill behind every hodler who survives multiple cycles. They don’t predict the top or the bottom, but rather build a process that keeps working when the cycle is unclear. Whether it’s a bull or bear market is a question about the market. Whether you need the answer is a question about your position.

If the future is unknowable, the rational response isn’t prediction, it’s process. So stop trying to be right about the cycle, and start making sure you don’t have to be. Set up recurring buys on Rhino, and let time do the work.

Until next week,

Hector