This bullmarket has indeed been a rollercoaster. Instead of a sustained bullrun, we’ve seen a market forming a wonky sideways head and shoulders formation on the Bitcoin chart and a more straight head and shoulders formation on the Ethereum and altcoin market cap charts over the last four years.

In bullish markets, a head and shoulders formation usually precedes a short bearmarket and renewed bullish sentiment.

This can already be seen, as the retail buyer has largely been absent and the social sentiment is bottoming out already in Q1 2026. The indicators broadly would confirm this, as MACD and RSI are consolidating around $85000, predicting that the bottom may not be fully in yet, but it may be near both in terms of downside as well as temporally.

As a prediction from the hip, I’d say that the market may bottom out this summer, forming a classic one-year bearmarket, but compressed both in terms of price contraction, as well as the length: the bearmarket would have begun after the peak in November 2025 and last roughly until October 2026.

This would confirm the four-year cycle

But more importantly, this kind of a short, modest bearmarket would confirm crypto’s macro thesis. Crypto represents the next iteration in value. Looking more closely, Bitcoin might have already topped out against the broader sector, meaning that finally, finally we may see the Flippening and mainstream adoption! though still years away, we may be standing on the precipice of the most profound financial revolution since the invention of the printing press, no … better … since coinage began in Lydia! it would rhyme!

The RWA’s would lead, followed with DeFi, then L1/L2/L3, then AI, then the rest and let’s not underestimate the budding segment of IP on chain, led by the NFT market and DeSci.