The two main questions most cryptocurrency investors have are how far is bitcoin can fall further and how long this bear market could last.
The price pain aspect has been widely debated, but the time dimension is another issue in itself.
Price pain refers to sharp declines or volatility that forces participants out of positions, while time pain reflects slow, range-bound conditions, exhausting both bulls and bears through lack of direction.
Bitcoin is currently trading below $66,000, down more than 3% in the past 24 hours and about 45% below its all-time high in October, marking a nearly six-month-long bear market.
One indicator suggesting continued temporal pain is the HODL waves of Glassnode’s realized capitalization. This metric groups bitcoin’s supply by the last time coins were moved, with each band representing different holding periods, and weights them by realized price, the average price at which coins were recently exchanged on the channel.
Historically, bear market troughs have coincided with long-term holders, those holding assets for six months or more, controlling at least 85% of the supply. Typically, price dips form first, and it is not until several months later that supply from long-term holders reaches these high levels, indicating that these investors bought at depressed prices and held their positions throughout the bear market.
Currently, long-term holders represent approximately 80% of the supply. If this trend continues, the market could move closer to a bottoming out phase, although several months of consolidation are likely still ahead.
