Bitcoin’s Rollercoaster: Why Investors Need to Chill Before the Next Crash

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Picture a long‑term Bitcoin bull, arms folded, lecturing fellow investors in the middle of a market that feels as stable as a toddler on a unicycle. He’s quietly imploring everyone to stay measured and strategic – because those “brutal short‑term challenges” aren’t going anywhere, even if the price charts look like they’ve been scraped with a rubber stamp.

In a delightfully detailed thread on X, market analyst Caleb Franzen laid out the logic behind his calmness. If you’re thinking “bullish for the long run means ignore the dent in the price structure,” think again. Franzen’s framework is as rooted in crayon sketches of cloud‑filled lines as it is in the real‑world dynamics of bear markets, moving averages, and the occasional prophetic theatrics of price action.

Recognizing the Breakdown Below Key Moving Averages

He zeroed in on Bitcoin’s October 2025 slide below the 2‑day 200‑moving‑average cloud, with the price sprawled around $97,000. For him, that was the marked moment – all major bear markets’ve started with a decisive dip below that cloud. Picture a giant, indifferent cloud, and a stubborn mountain of capital making a nosy, “I’m going down,” gesture.

The chart he referenced shows the long‑term price dance with its trusty cloud companions. The thick red and blue bands demonstrate how the price tends to rise above these lines during trysts of optimism, and kiss them in the darkness of extended downturns. Each previous bear market phase is marked by losing faith in that 2‑day 200‑MA structure, and then belly‑achingly wailing away.

Franzen also pegs the 200‑week moving‑average cloud as a sort of boomerang – a magnet that pulls bearish sentiment. When the breakdown happened, that zone breathed between $55,000 and $65,000. Remember 2022? Bitcoin bellowed roughly 30% below that cloud before finally catching its breath at the bottom.

Thus, plausible scenarios emerge where Bitcoin could tumble 20% to 33% below the 200‑week range, nudging downside targets to roughly $37,000-$44,000. Coincidentally, that straits the long‑term holder’s “realized price” at about $41,700 – a well‑traveled spot that rattles on the avenging path of bear phases.

Using Historical Data Without Becoming Trapped By It

Bitcoin’s history is a curious thing: multiple 20%-30% pullbacks even in robust bull markets. In bear conditions, those dives can be marathon‑running, lasting months instead of weeks. But Franzen insists that prepping for a long‑term slump does not inexorably mean you should expect one to stew on your plate.

He was careful, even though his bearish base case smelled strongly of cautionary narratives, to underline that past performance is a figure of probability, not a crystal ball predicting exact replay. In other words, a story about “history does not guarantee repetition” gets served with a dollop of practical probability, not medical certainty.

Better to be ready for a multi‑quarter dip and then be pleasantly surprised by some resilience, than to go out with a bullish cheery float expecting a quick rebound and get blindsided by a deeper trough. That mindset cuts emotional decision‑making – which is the real villain in these tales.

On the flip side, focusing exclusively on a $40,000 retest may be like boxing yourself into a single scenario, only to find out that Bitcoin chose an earlier support point and hollows out a new up‑trend. Franzen even posted some conditions that would flip the script.

If the fall beneath the 2‑day 200‑MA cloud was the “début” of the bearish hints in November 2025, then a breakout above that same structure would become the golden ticket back to bullish glory. A re‑assumption of the 2‑day 200‑MA cloud, on top of the 55‑week cloud at $99,000, would be the line in the sand that signals a constructive turn.

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2026-03-03 23:12