jakiro
Author: CG | Yijian, researcher at ABC Alpha; Source: X, @Cyrus_G3
Recently, $BTC fell from a high of 124,000 and fell to a low of 107,350, and $ETH fell from 4956 and fell to a low of 4257.Moreover, ETH has risen recently and BTC has fallen instead of rising.
Everyone shouted: Is the bull market over?
So, is the cow gone?What stage is the market now?
Next, let’s listen to “Draw the Cow with One Sword”:
The crypto bull market is roughly divided into three stages: the first bull, the middle bull, and the tail.
At the beginning of Niu, capital and market confidence have just recovered from the scars and painful memories of the last bear market.The market risk preference is low, and funds basically choose the most stable asset attempt, that is, BTC.Therefore, in every bull market, BTC is the first to rise, and Altcoins (altcoins) such as ETH are relatively weak in the rise, and Altcoins such as ETH are even in a situation where BTC rises alone, while Altcoins such as ETH are falling instead of rising.At this time, the dominance of BTC often rises to more than 60%.
In the bull market, market confidence has recovered on a large scale, risk appetite has increased, and funds have begun to try relatively high-risk assets.The specific manifestation is that funds began to flow from BTC to Altcoins Leader – ETH, and ETH began to rise continuously in a single-day manner, and even ETH rose and BTC fell back.However, Altcoins Season has not arrived at this time.
The market is completely crazy, the risk appetite is at its highest, Fomo is full of emotions, leverage is full, funds begin to rush toward Altcoins, which has extremely high risk, and some Shitcoin and Meme, which have no fundamentals, have begun to surge in a single day.Everyone thinks this time is different.Altcoins Season Copyright Season has officially arrived.At this time, BTC and ETH also began to reach their all-time highs.Then, liquidity retreated instantly at a certain high point, the market collapsed, and once again entered a long bear market.
Therefore, different stages of the bull market are driven by the evolution of capital’s risk preferences, and are essentially driven by human fear and greed.
To see this fact more clearly, let’s review history together:
2017 Niu Chu (December 2016-Q1, 2017)
BTC soared from US$700 in December 2016 to around US$1,300 in February 2017, and has basically doubled.At this point, BTC has officially emerged from the ruins of the previous round of bear market, marking the slowly beginning of a new bull market.And the ETH during this period is still hovering around US$15.
2017 Niu Zhong (March-September 2017)
Due to the ICO boom, funds rushed into ETH, and ETH rose from US$20 to US$300, achieving an increase of more than 15 times in 7 months; at this time, BTC rose from US$1,300 to US$4,000, and achieved an increase of about 3 times in 7 months. At this stage, BTC rose significantly lower than ETH.The above data also verifies the characteristics of “ETH increase is greater than BTC” in the bull market.
However, the market has not yet entered the final stage, BTC and ETH have not reached historical highs, and the copycat season has not officially arrived.
2017 Oxtail (October 2017-January 2018)
After a brief adjustment of the 94 policy, ICO completely entered a crazy mode in October. A white paper can raise hundreds of millions of dollars, altcoins are flying all over the sky, and the ICO bull market has entered the final crazy stage.
Around December 16, 2017, the BTC price reached a historical high of 19,600; one month later, ETH reached US$1,400 around January 20, 2018, and then the market fell sharply, ICO was cold and collapsed in a full-scale manner, and this bull market ended.
Let’s look at this bull market in 2021.
At the beginning of 2020, the global economy was hit by the new crown epidemic.On March 15, 2020, the United States urgently launched quantitative easing policy (QE).Therefore, there was a short period of policy bulls from March 2020 to March 2021.However, even the policy of the bull follows the rules of the bull’s first-boiled bull’s middle-boiled bull’s tail. Let’s briefly review it.:
Policy Niuchu (March 2020-June 2020)
As soon as the quantitative easing policy news came out on March 15, BTC prices immediately emerged from the long bear market from 2018 to 2019.BTC rose from US$5,000 in March to US$10,000 in August, achieving a double increase in three months; at this time, ETH mainly slowly rose at around US$200.
Policy bullshit (July 2020-February 2021)
As quantitative easing policies strengthen, the world began to exert money, banks entered the era of zero interest rates or even negative interest rates, and global funds began to look for returns everywhere.At this time, the Ethereum ecosystem in the crypto market began to have a DeFi Summer craze, and various DeFi Farming models began to appear.
During this stage, ETH continued to soar, from US$200 in July 2020 to US$1,900 in February 2021, an increase of nearly 10 times; while BTC in this stage rose from US$10,000 to US$39,000, less than 4 times, and the increase of BTC is lower than ETH, which is in line with the characteristics of the bull market.
Policy Oxtail (March-May 2021)
At this stage, in addition to the amazing DeFi protocol with high APY, various meme assets that have no fundamentals and are completely driven by emotions have begun to fly all over the sky, and funds have entered the final crazy mode.
Soon, around April 15, 2021, BTC reached US$62,800 and began to fall; one month later, around May 14, 2021, ETH reached US$3,900, the market began to take a sharp turn for the worse, various DeFi Farmings began to collapse, Meme plummeted, and the market collapsed again.
The round of crypto bull market driven by quantitative easing policies has come to an end, and the market has fallen until the end of June 2021.
Immediately afterwards, from July 2021 to December 2021, the crypto market entered the regular 2021 bull market cycle..
Due to the influence of previous policy bulls, the prices of BTC and ETH in July 2021 were also higher than the highs of the previous bull market (2017) (BTC of 30,000 US dollars >19,000 US dollars, ETH of 19,000 US dollars >1400 US dollars). Therefore, the initial bull market of the 2021 crypto bull market has been previewed in the previous few months, so the crypto market has entered the mid-bomb market directly from July.
2021 Crypto Bull (July-Early September 2021)
ETH rose from US$1,900 to US$3,900, an increase of more than 2 times, while BTC price rose from US$30,000 to US$50,000, an increase of 1.6 times.The increase in BTC is lower than ETH, which is fully in line with the characteristics of the mid-term bull market of crypto.
2021 Crypto Oxtail (September 2021-November 2021)
At this stage, a large number of DeFi derivative models appeared in the crypto market, such as Gamefi and SocialFI. These are all rough imitations of the DeFi model and are also a kind of residual heat of the DeFi boom.At the same time, a new round of Meme frenzy appeared again. Shib was born at the end of August to November, with a 10,000-fold increase in just three months. Memes of various animals flew everywhere, and the market entered the final stage of madness again.
On November 10, 2021, BTC rushed to US$69,000, reaching a historical high. On the same day, ETH also reached a historical high of US$4,878, and then the market took a sharp turn for the worse. The narratives of GameFi and SocialFi were shattered, and various Memes plummeted, and the market entered a slow bear market again.
So,What kind of script will this bull market in 2025 be like?Will it be different from the previous two bull markets??
What stage is the current bull market for cryptocurrency
This bull market will indeed be different from the previous two bull markets.Because the institution has entered.
The entry of institutions will inject new and different forces into the crypto market.However, no matter what, the basic rules of the third stage of the bull market will not change, because human nature will not change.
Let’s take a look together:
From January to May 2024, due to BTC spot approval, the crypto market ushered in a short period of institutional bull market.
On January 10, 2024, BTC spot ETF passed, and BTC rose from US$39,000 in early January to US$69,000 in May, hitting the high of the previous bull market.During this period, ETH also rose, hitting a high of US$4,000, but it did not break the previous high.As the market approaches, the market enters a three-month (May-August) adjustment stage.
(Have you found that this round of institutional bull is very similar to the quantitative easing-driven policy bull in March 2020?)
From September 2024 to December 2024, as ETH spot ETH officially started trading in July, more and more institutional funds entered the crypto market, especially on November 6, crypto-friendly Trump officially ran to become the president of the United States, which further accelerated the injection of Wall Street power.
Institutions are beginning to take control of the crypto market.
From September to December, BTC rose again from US$53,000 to US$109,000, doubling and breaking through the 100,000 mark; ETH also broke through US$2,100, but it still did not break the previous high.During this period, there was a situation that had never happened in the first two bull markets, which was the market where traditional altcoins remained moving and Meme flew randomly.
The core reason is that there is no paradigm innovation in the crypto market similar to the ICO in 2017 (essentially smart contract issuance) and the DeFi model in 2020. Therefore, traditional altcoins have not taken off, but an alternative meme paradigm, that is, the pump.fun paradigm, was born during this period.
Therefore, from September 2024 to December 2024, there was a brief rise in BTC, with Meme flying all over the sky, and a barbell-style bull market that was unpopular with traditional counterfeits.At this stage, the essence is still the institutional bull brought by ETFs.
After this bull market, many people think that this bull market has ended, because BTC breaks the previous high and Meme is flying all over the sky, which is very similar to the bulltail market in the first two rounds..
As expected, starting from January 2025, as the Trump administration began to engage in a tariff war, the Middle East war broke out again, the market fell all the way, BTC fell from a high of 109,000 US dollars, a drop of up to 30%, ETH fell from 4,000 US dollars to 1,400 US dollars, Meme even plummeted, and the market was wailing.
Many people say that the bull market is over, it is indeed very similar to the bull market..
However, starting from April 9, 2025, BTC began to sing all the way from US$75,000, and by July 14, 2025, BTC exceeded US$120,000, reaching US$123,000.At this time, ETH broke through US$1,400 from US$3,000.
A new round of bull market has started again, although it is also a bull market dominated by institutions.
(At this time, we will find that the two markets from January to May 2024 and September to December 2024 are indeed very similar to the policy bull driven by quantitative easing policies in 2020. They are driven by the interference of traditional forces outside of encryption (ETFs, institutions, policies). In fact, the real conventional bull market for encryption has not yet begun.).
The period from April 9 to July 14, 2025 is very similar to the initial bull market in this round of crypto bull market. BTC led the rise, ETH followed the rise (still not breaking through the previous high), and there was almost no movement in other counterfeits.
If we regard the period from April 9 to July 14 as the beginning of this bull market.Then, from July 14th to August 30th, it will be in a bull market.
The characteristics of bull market are: ETH leads the rise, ETH increases more than BTC, and even ETH rises and BTC falls..
This is indeed the case from July 14th to August 30th.
After ETH broke through $3,000 on July 14, it has been singing all the way, while BTC is a little weak.
On August 9, ETH broke through US$4,000 and BTC was US$118,000
On August 24, ETH reached an all-time high of US$4956 and BTC was US$116,000
On August 31, ETH was $4450 BTC was $108500
We did see that ETH rose more than BTC, and ETH rose and BTC fell. Similarly, the counterfeit still did not explode.This is indeed a typical bull market feature.
Therefore, Yijian believes that at present, it is in a bull market.
How long will this bull market last
The 2017 bull market lasted for 6 months;
The policy bull market in 2020 lasted for 5 months;
The 2021 bull market lasts for 3 months
On the conservative side, assuming that this bull market lasts for 2-3 months, then the bull market starting from mid-July will roughly go until mid-September to mid-October.During this period, ETH continued to lead the rise, and BTC’s increase continued to be lower than ETH.
The bull market continued until late September to late October. From October to December, copycats broke out, and all kinds of memes were flying all over the sky, and the bull market entered a completely crazy oxtail stage.
Of course, in this round of oxtail market, we may see another copycat season-Altcoin ETFs and micro-strategy for altcoin stocks led by institutions and listed companies.Of course, during this period, BTC and ETH will break new highs.
Finally, at the craziest moment, the market suddenly came to an abrupt end and then entered the next cycle.
Summarize
The bull market is divided into three stages: bull start, bull middle, and bull tail. The conversion of these stages is driven by capital risk preference from low to medium to high, and is essentially driven by human fear and greed..
Niu Chu: BTC leads the rise, ETH rises slightly, and the copycat remains unchanged.
Bull: ETH leads the rise, BTC follows the rise, and even ETH rises and BTC falls, and the copycat moves slightly.
Oxtail: The copycat season broke out, Meme flew randomly, BTC and ETH broke new highs, and then the market collapsed.
The two bull markets in 2017 and 2021 have basically verified these laws, and the bull market in 2025 will also follow these laws.
Although institutional entry has brought new power to the crypto bull market, the essence of bull-bear transformation will not change, because human nature will not change.
