Is Bitcoin stuck in the $60,000s forever?

The Roundup is Rhino’s weekly read for people who'd rather build a process than predict a price.

Have you been asking yourself whether Bitcoin is just going to sit in the $60,000s forever? And if so, are you feeling kind of done with it all?

We’ve been writing ad nauseam about some uncomfortable truths surrounding Bitcoin bottoms. One of them is that they don’t really announce themselves. There isn’t a big green candle, nor a clear-cut headline. What rears itself instead, every single cycle, is boredom.

“Bear markets die in apathy and you know that they’re dead when the market stops reacting to bad news,” declared Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise. 

Hougan’s words come as the Clarity Act odds have fallen to 14% from 40%, Bitcoin permabull Michael Saylor has sold, and neither have managed to put a dent in Bitcoin’s price.

In other words, we’re nearly out of sellers.

Jesse Meyers, head of strategy at Bitcoin treasury the Smarter Web Company, who has lived through three of these downturns, put it plainly this week: the best time to buy always feels like the worst time to buy. 

A bear market doesn’t end when good news arrives. It arrives when everyone who was going to sell has sold. Usually that moment feels less like hope and more like a room full of people who have quietly given up.

It’s a trap. That feeling that makes you want to run for the exit is the same one that shows up right before things turn. 

How you hold Bitcoin decides whether you can hold it when it counts. Our new 33-page report breaks down ETFs, exchanges, and self-custody, including the fees, the risks, and what history shows when the middleman fails.

Exclusive interviews with Lyn Alden, Ric Edelman, and Ryan Rasmussen.

Forget the feeling. Don’t trust what your mood is telling you and look at what the data actually says. 

The above chart is tracking whether your average Bitcoin holder is sitting in the blue or red. At the depths of every past cycle — 2015, 2019, 2022 — it crashed deep into those red (those circled dips), creating the moment when even patient holders were losing money and finally threw in the total. 

That total exhaustion is what has marked every real bottom. 

Right now? We’re only just dipping below the line. The temperature is cold, but nowhere near that everyone’s-giving-up low. 

That’s not just one lonely opinion, either.

This chart helps tell the story. The pink line is the average price recent buyers paid for their coins. When Bitcoin trades below it, this year’s buyers are underwater, which is usually when nervous holders sell and the market runs low on sellers. 

We’ve been under that line for about six months now. 

In 2022, we sat below it for seven before it flipped. This is not a promise history repeats — it’s just one more gauge sitting exactly where it normally does before a turn, not after.

The bottom is never obvious while you're living through it. Here's how to actually read one:

How you hold Bitcoin decides whether you can hold it when it counts. Our new 33-page report breaks down ETFs, exchanges, and self-custody, including the fees, the risks, and what history shows when the middleman fails.

Exclusive interviews with Lyn Alden, Ric Edelman, and Ryan Rasmussen.

Of course, there’s no real prize for calling the exact bottom, aside from getting to pick up cheaper Bitcoin than at any other time in the cycle. But there are real mistakes to be made when you let your mood make the call. Don’t become a forced seller when you don’t need to be.

See you next week,

Rhino Research