Is this bull market rising slowly and is it more complicated than previous bull markets?
Not only does it rise slowly, but it also has poor liquidity and lacks traffic.Author: Crypto_Painter
This Bull Market:
The rise is slow, showing no profit effect like previous bull markets;
Poor liquidity, with most high-market-cap altcoins, except BTC, failing to reach new highs;
Lack of traffic, with social media attention far below past bull markets;
Let's systematically discuss these three points.
1. Is this bull market rising slower than previous bull markets?
How to judge whether this bull market is rising fast or slow? This is a technical question. The momentum of price increases is not simply about the speed of change, but rather about its sustainability;
For example, suppose a bull market takes one year to complete. If this bull market oscillates at a low level for the first 11 months but then rises by 300% in the last month before peaking and entering a bear market, would you still call this a bull market?
Although the last month saw a rapid increase, this kind of market does not represent sustained demand; it can only be seen as manipulation by the main players, often seen in small-cap altcoin markets. The purpose of such a bull market is singular: to pump and dump;
Therefore, for BTC, the bull market we need to see is one with long-term sustainability, where buying pressure continuously emerges and prices keep rising. This structure corresponds to long-term strong demand, indicating that people are genuinely engaged in the process of buying, holding, and long-term holding;
We can analyze the price growth rate of each bull market from three dimensions:
They are: the duration of the bull market, the price increase brought by the bull market, and the momentum during the bull market process;
As shown in the figure:
To make a fair comparison with the current bull market, I will use the same structural intervals to calculate the average daily price increase percentage;
The corresponding intervals are the early brewing stages of a bull market, from the lowest point to when the price just breaks through a new high and oscillates near the previous historical high;
Dividing the price increase during this period by the number of days it lasted shows that the early trend stages of the last three bull markets indeed saw a gradual decline in their growth rates, which were 1.10%, 0.71%, and the current 0.65% average daily increase;
In other words, even if BTC immediately breaks out into a frenzied bull market, the growth rate during the early brewing stage of this bull market will always be lower than the previous two bull markets. Not to mention, if BTC continues to oscillate, this 0.65% figure will continue to decrease over time;
From this perspective, this bull market is indeed rising slowly.
Next, let's look at price momentum:
As shown in the figure, the following three charts correspond to the performance of BTC prices after breaking new highs in 2017, 2020, and 2024 on the ASR-VC trend indicator:
March 2017
December 2020
March 2024
At first glance, there seem to be obvious differences;
In the first two instances of price breaking historical highs, there were varying degrees of deep corrections, but these corrections had a characteristic: they did not damage the strength of the original upward trend. The green midline in the chart remained upward, whereas in the current market, the green midline of the daily level has almost flattened, a situation that has never occurred in history;
On the other hand, it is worth noting that after the deep corrections in the first two price instances, when testing the historical highs for the second or third time, they successfully broke through, leading to a new strong bull market. In contrast, the current situation has seen multiple tests without breaking into a strong bull market;
Conclusion: From this perspective, the trend momentum of the early brewing stage of the current bull market is far inferior to that of the previous two bull markets.
While this does not mean that this bull market may have peaked, from the overall structural perspective of a bull market, the foundation of this bull market has not been well established, and the demand is not sustained, which has led to prolonged oscillation at the previous high;
So what is the reason for this weak foundation?
Next, let's compare from the perspective of liquidity!
2. Is the overall liquidity of this bull market worse than previous bull markets?
Although the overall liquidity level cannot absolutely reflect price fluctuations, the liquidity level can determine the upper limit of price increases;
Observing the overall liquidity level of the cryptocurrency market is mainly done through on-chain liquidity and off-chain liquidity;
On-chain liquidity generally refers to assets that have been exchanged for stablecoins or cryptocurrencies through fiat, reflected in the total market value of stablecoins;
Off-chain liquidity generally refers to global liquidity, more specifically represented as net liquidity in USD, reflected in the chart as the Federal Reserve's balance sheet minus a series of USD treasury account deposits;
First, let's look at on-chain liquidity, specifically the performance of stablecoin market value in the last two bull markets. Since USDC and DAI appeared later, we will start by looking solely at USDT;
As shown in the figure, to align with the current market rhythm where BTC's price is near the previous high and ready to break through, we compare the USDT market value level during the same period of the last bull market, which are: the USDT market value at the historical high and the current USDT market value just before breaking the historical high;
It can be seen that before the last bull market completely broke through the 20,000 mark, the USDT market value compared to the market value level at the peak of the 2017 bull market had already increased by 18.7 billion USD. In simple terms, when the price returned to the same position, USDT had increased by 18.7 billion USD compared to before;
This additional 18.7 billion USD in liquidity was the foundation laid in the early stages of the last bull market. Considering that BTC's price is different now, we also need to pay attention to the increase in USDT's market value during this period. It can be seen that before the last bull market completely broke through the historical high, USDT's market value had already increased by 1680%!
Now let's look at the current bull market. Under the same conditions, the USDT market value has increased by 38.5 billion USD, but the increase is only 52.16%. Note that although the total market value is indeed higher than the last bull market, BTC's price is completely different;
In other words, because BTC's historical high is different, the liquidity required for the breakthrough must also be different;
We can simply convert using price ratios:
$69000 / $20000 = 3.45
18.7 billion x 3.45 = 64.5 billion
This means that if the current bull market wants to achieve the same breakthrough as the last bull market, we need the USDT market value to be at least 64.5 billion USD higher than the peak level of the last bull market;
In other words, the additional 38.5 billion USD added to the market is insufficient, and the overall liquidity of this bull market is also lacking compared to the last bull market;
You might say, "You didn't account for other stablecoins; isn't that cheating?"
Alright, let's calculate the performance of USDT + USDC + DAI three major stablecoins and see:
As shown in the figure, I not only added USDC and DAI but also included the net inflow of BTC's spot ETF. It can be seen that the on-chain liquidity increase in this bull market has indeed increased significantly, reaching 50.9 billion USD;
In contrast, the on-chain liquidity increase before the last bull market completely broke through was 22 billion USD;
If we compare using the same ratio as the last bull market:
22 billion x 3.45 = 75.9 billion
However, the liquidity accumulation in our current bull market is only 50.9 billion USD;
75.9 billion - 50.9 billion = 25 billion
This means that for the current bull market to replicate the last bull market's behavior of oscillating near the previous high for a few weeks before breaking through, it still needs at least 25 billion USD in liquidity increase;
Clearly, it is this missing 25 billion that has caused the current bull market to oscillate lifelessly near the previous high for an entire quarter!
In other words, the liquidity accumulation in this bull market is indeed insufficient!
But the question arises: is it impossible to break through without this 25 billion?
I personally believe not necessarily. The key is whether liquidity can continue to increase. In other words, if we still need to oscillate for three more months, but during this period, the liquidity brought by "stablecoins + ETFs + Hong Kong ETFs" gradually reaches above 20 billion USD, then we can smoothly break through the historical high and move away from this frustrating range;
However, the current situation is indeed not optimistic, as the increase in stablecoins has stagnated, and whether the net inflow of ETFs can continue to show sustained inflows after a brief surge last week remains uncertain;
The following chart shows the trend of stablecoin market value and weekly net inflow of ETFs over the past three months:
It can be seen that the growth of the total market value of stablecoins has clearly stagnated, and it is likely to start choosing a direction. If the total market value remains flat, that's fine, but the worst-case scenario is that the stablecoin market value begins to shrink and flow out, which would pose a significant threat to this bull market;
At the same time, due to the lack of new liquidity in stablecoins, the net inflow of ETFs has begun to recover in the past month, leading to a gradual rebound in BTC prices under the condition of little change in stablecoin market value;
You might wonder why BTC enters an extreme low-volume sideways trend every weekend. The chart above explains the cause of this phenomenon, as the on-chain stablecoin funds have completed their speculation, making BTC's price more susceptible to ETF influences, thus liquidity only resumes during U.S. stock market opening hours;
Therefore, the most crucial thing to focus on now is whether the stablecoin market value can find a new direction. If it moves upward, it will certainly indicate some long-term macro data benefits, allowing BTC to officially break through the current range as additional liquidity gradually becomes sufficient;
If it moves downward, it will inevitably lead to longer-term oscillations and corrections. In simple terms, BTC's current breakthrough speed is too fast, arriving at the BOSS (historical high) and finding it unbeatable, necessitating an additional 25 billion USD to enhance its strength. BTC, unwilling to give up, chooses to grind levels at the BOSS's door until it has recharged enough funds to launch the final challenge;
Conclusion: This bull market is indeed different from past bull markets. The early phase has moved too quickly, leading to a situation where time must be exchanged for space. If it can maintain for long enough in the current range and liquidity continues to increase, it can still break through. However, if it accidentally falls below the range and liquidity begins to shrink and flow out, the bull market may end prematurely.
Since we've mentioned macro factors, let's talk about off-chain liquidity, specifically net USD liquidity;
Regarding this part, since it involves too many macro elements, I can only make a simple comparison, as shown in the figure:
We will use a similar comparison method as with on-chain liquidity. It can be seen that when the last bull market finally broke through the historical high, the external environment's net USD liquidity had increased by 1,433 billion USD, reaching a 33.25% increase;
In contrast, the early stage of the current bull market not only did not see an increase in external net USD liquidity but instead experienced a reduction of 857.1 billion USD, resulting in a 12.22% shrinkage.
This seems to explain why the accumulation of on-chain liquidity in the current bull market is far inferior to that of the last bull market. Clearly, the external environment is not in a liquidity-rich state;
However, even so, if we closely examine the blue net USD liquidity curve, the overall performance over the past year has been oscillating upward. This means that although overall liquidity is insufficient, at least it has been in a slow growth state over the past year;
And BTC has still managed to achieve a brief new high under such a harsh external environment. To be honest, if the proportion of liquidity flowing from USD to BTC during the last bull market was only (220/14330) 1.5%, the proportion in the current bull market may have reached (509/5692) 8.9%!
This represents a new level of trust and favor from traditional capital towards BTC!
From this perspective, this bull market is indeed different from past bull markets. The overall environment is poor, and everyone is performing poorly, but BTC is still among the top 5, especially with Nvidia taking the top spot in the class; BTC's performance has been quite good!
That concludes the liquidity section. One more point is about media attention.
3. Is there less attention on this bull market compared to past bull markets?
To cut to the chase, the answer is yes!
For practitioners or traders in the cryptocurrency industry, it seems that BTC has been the focus of global attention over the past two years, but in fact, at least from a data perspective, the results are quite disappointing;
As shown in the figure, this is the view count of all BTC-related videos on YouTube over the past five years. You can clearly see that BTC's highlight moment was during the 2021 bull market, while the current bull market has less attention and topic heat than before!
A sad fact: when BTC broke the historical high of 69,000, its heat on YouTube was even lower than during the FTX collapse…
However, if we still compare using the previous method of breaking historical highs, the data is still much better than before, indicating that if BTC's price can continue to show strong performance and eventually break the 100,000 USD mark, these long-silent retail investors will still return!
Conclusion: From the perspective of social media, this bull market is not much different from past bull markets. BTC has achieved normalization on social media, especially in the current market that is gradually becoming more like the U.S. stock market, where the attention of retail investors is far less significant than in previous bull markets.
