This week felt like a mood swing you could measure with a seismograph.

Bitcoin down to 84k. HIVE slumping to 0.101. Equities wobbling in sympathy.

I think everything was lower, but I'm not chasing the low on the chart. Just going with what I see on the 1 day chart.

The sentiment? A wall of red. Extreme fear in crypto. Extreme fear in the stock market.

The bears aren’t just sniffing around; they’ve spent most of the week making themselves comfortable. The question is whether this is a temporary visit or the start of a longer, colder season.

The Sentiment Picture: Pure Fear

The Fear & Greed Index is not a predictive tool, but it is an emotional barometer, and right now, the reading is unmistakable:

People are pulling back across the board, not because of a specific event, but because the atmosphere has shifted. Risk appetite evaporates and everyone freezes like a deer in the headlights, desperately wondering if they should get out now before things fall more.

Looks bad. But does it look worse than it actually is?

Are We Officially in a Bear Market?

Structurally, no.

A true bear market builds through a sequence of lower highs and lower lows, and we don’t have that yet. Yet. BTC dropping to 84k looks bad, but historically Bitcoin has had far uglier corrections while still remaining firmly mid-bull.

HIVE’s 0.101, on the other hand, is disappointing, but HIVE behaves differently from BTC. It tends to sink slowly and rise violently. When sentiment flips, HIVE often jumps harder than it fell. At least I will keep telling myself this. Remember remember, $3 HIVE in November! (It's almost exactly 4 years since that jump)

So it feels like a bear, but technically, not quite yet.

The 4-Year BTC Cycle Question

Now comes the uncomfortable part.

If the classic 4-year Bitcoin cycle still holds, the timing lines up almost too perfectly:
the “bull period” ends right now. Almost to the week.

Historically the pattern goes like this:

1. Halving → explosive bull run
2. Post-bull cooling → sharp drawdowns
3. Drift downward or sideways for a year
4. Slow recovery into the next halving
5. Repeat

Under that script, this week fits the start of the cooling phase. But... here’s the wrinkle:

Wall Street is now balls-deep in Bitcoin.

With ETFs, institutional exposure, automated risk models, and volatility harvesting strategies, the BTC market is no longer the small investor-dominated organism it was in 2012, 2016, or even 2020.

So the real question is: Does the old pattern survive institutionalization?

Institutions don’t behave like retail. They buy dips systematically, not emotionally. They arbitrage. They rebalance. They hedge. They don’t panic-sell the way normal traders do. Michael Saylor is a great example of this. Ignore the price and keep on with business as usual.

Which means the classic 4-year rhythm might stretch, compress, or even dissolve completely. If the old cycle really is dead, then this downturn is just another correction, not a new epoch. But...ff the cycle survives, this week could well mark the opening act of another long winter.

But you know, this is crypto: It could go either way. Flip a coin.

Where Metal Fits into This Mess

Gold and silver do what they always do: move slowly and with total disregard for crypto drama. They are the emotional opposite of Bitcoin. Metal doesn’t moon; it simply persists. Gold has climbed sharply this year on persistent inflation fears, and silver looks like it may finally be breaking out of its long-standing range for the same reasons. (A long-standing range that many believe has been due to intense manipulation, manipulation that it may finally be breaking out of.)

This week, both have been moving sideways as they watch what the other markets are doing. If Bitcoin is entering a real cooling period, metals may become worth watching as stability anchors. Gold is near an incredible $4100, silver around $50, and both have shown a level of resilience that crypto hasn’t matched this month. If the powers that be can't regain control of silver, we could see it pop up before the end of the year. $60? $70? I've even seen people calling for $100, but that seems more wishful thinking, at least for now.

So What Happens Next?

If this we hit a Santa rally or something and fear unwinds next week, Bitcoin’s path back to 90k will be quick—BTC tends to snap upward far more violently than it bleeds downward. But if the fear compounds, we could see the market start talking itself into a full cycle reversal, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So which is it? Do we see signs that this fall was just a normal correction and it starts to recover, or does it continue to bleed down into the 70s and we enter a new 4-year cycle winter.

The market hasn’t answered yet.

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What’s your take? Are we at the opening bell of a new bear season, or is this another dramatic shakeout before everything rips upward again?

❦

David is an American teacher and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku. He blogs here and at laspina.org. Write him on Bluesky. 【Support @dbooster with Hive SBI】