Ivan on Tech analyzes whether Bitcoin's 2026 price action is repeating the 2022 bear market pattern
Ivan on Tech presents a technical analysis comparing Bitcoin's current price structure to the 2022 bear market cycle.
Summary
Ivan on Tech presents a technical analysis of Bitcoin's current price action, arguing that the structure — a double top followed by a dump with intermittent relief rallies — closely mirrors the 2022 bear market pattern that ultimately resulted in a 77% decline from peak to trough. He identifies volume as the key hidden indicator for determining whether a macro bottom has been established, arguing that neither of the recent lows has been accompanied by the kind of high-volume capitulation event that historically marks a genuine bottom. He also examines Michael Saylor's ongoing Bitcoin purchases through Strategy's preferred stock issuance, noting a deceleration in capital raised that he views as a cautionary signal. Throughout, he emphasizes trend-following as his core methodology, noting that Bitcoin remains in a weekly bearish trend with a lower-high structure, while pointing out that other markets — particularly US equities and AI-related stocks — have continued to trend bullishly.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Bitcoin's Current Structure Compared to the 2022 Bear Market
Ivan on Tech: Let's address the elephant in the room. Let's talk about whether we are repeating the 2022 scenario where we had a top, a double top, and then a massive dump — which took us 77% down. During which, by the way, we had several pumps of 20% — for example, here it was a 22% pump — or here we had a bounce of approximately 43%. But ultimately, the year ended with a massive loss. And overall, from the top of the bull to the bottom of the bear, we had a 77% loss.
If we look at the current scenario, we have a quite similar situation: a top, a double top, then a dump, during which we did have this pump right here of approximately 20%, which you could say mirrors this one right here. Now we're going through this pump right here of 37%, which you could argue mirrors this one, which took us 46% from the low to the peak right here before losing approximately another 70% and then finding the bottom.
Let me highlight the most common objections against this analysis. Number one: this happened last time, so it cannot happen again because everyone expects it to happen again, so it will not happen. Number two: Saylor is buying Bitcoin by issuing Strategy's preferred stock and he's raising so much money that we will just moon from here because he's buying and buying and buying. Number three: institutions are here, this time is different — and everything else we can put in that number three as well.
Of course, no one knows the future. I don't know the future. And yet in 2022, we made an absolute killing here on the channel shorting the market. Since 2023, we've been risk-on. We've been riding this bull market. And if you've been watching this channel, you know that we've participated in everything that this bull market has to offer, including all of the memes — Dog With Hat, Pepe, all of the shitcoins, all of the alts, and so on and so forth. So we took the best fruits from the bull market, and then as the bear market came and we saw that the market was weakening, we said on October 8th that it's time to be risk-off, that the bear risk had increased, and that you cannot be complacent — you have to be super careful and be risk-off.
When you look on the chart at exactly when that was, it was right here — exactly this candle that topped out and then started to go down, so it was around 125K. All in all, we have quite a good track record here on the channel to speak about these topics.
Trend-Following as the Core Strategy
So let's look at the current Bitcoin price. As you can see, we're currently at 81K. We have this bear trend, meaning that we're overall bearish. And there's a secret clue that you can already see on this chart right now that signals the likelihood of the bottom being in. Many people are saying that this right here was the bottom, that this right here was the bottom. But actually there is a clue here on the chart that shows you with great probability whether this was the bottom or not. See if you can find it, and I will reveal it towards the end of the video.
The first thing you should know about the markets is of course that no one can say for sure what's going to happen. No one knows the future. And this is not about knowing the future or predicting the future. It's about positioning in the best possible way — where you have the deck of cards stacked against you, you are risk-off; when the deck of cards is stacked in your favor, you are risk-on. So for us, it's all about weighing the probabilities and seeing where we have the best risk-reward to multiply our capital.
The first piece of the puzzle is of course the trend. When things are going up, they're just more likely to continue going up. When you take each particular candle and you roll the dice of probabilities, the likelihood is that the trend will continue. But again, it's the likelihood — the likelihood doesn't mean certainty. Sometimes the less likely scenario takes place and we actually go down, we create a new trend. So here, for example, it was a bull trend. Then we broke down, we created a bear trend, and now we are within the bear trend.
I am the living proof that trends work. Trend-following strategies in crypto are one of the best, easiest, and most reliable strategies to trade. I actually wrote a whole book about it — how I made a lot of money, how I lost a lot of money, and then finding trend-following. Because at the end of the day, you have a very simple, repeatable process here which is easy to learn but not that easy to implement. Why? Because people are so emotional. Whenever you give them a small pump like this, people think we're going to go to all-time high. The same thing obviously is in a bull market — when you have a dump, people think we're going to go to zero again, we're going to go into the bear market.
So just following the trend — it is simple, but it does take a bit of practice to get right. And even now, when it's clearly bearish on the weekly, many people are saying that we're going to go to all-time high, even though we're still here at this resistance, we're still way below this peak right here, and overall have a higher-lower-high structure where we have a high, a lower high, a lower high.
You see that if everyone just followed trends, everyone would be so much richer. Instead, what do people do? They round-trip. Even if they're lucky, they lose everything. They round-trip to zero, or they buy the top and then they hodl just down and down and down and down, because there is the most attention on an asset around the top. So many people get sucked in and they just hodl down. They don't realize that the bear trend has started and they end up minus 90%.
I can really vouch for myself as a personal case study: trend-following is probably the best way to trade crypto assets because they trend in very big trends. They move in very big trends. When you have an altcoin, it pumps a lot and it dumps a lot. You want to capture the majority of the move up and then avoid the majority of the move down, or short it down. That's very important.
So trends are the first piece of the puzzle, and currently we are bearish on the weekly trend, which is very important — which is one point for the bears. But still there is a hidden clue here on the chart that I have not revealed yet, which I will reveal towards the end of this video, which basically shows you with highest likelihood whether this right here — 60K — was the bottom or not.
Michael Saylor and Strategy's Bitcoin Purchases
The next piece of the puzzle is of course Saylor, because Saylor has been able to raise billions of dollars every month in order to buy Bitcoin by selling Strategy's preferred stock. You can see here how much he raises each and every week. The dark blue line shows how much he's been able to raise in any single week. So for example, here in the middle of April, he raised 1.6 billion. Then in early April, he raised 1.2 billion. Then here at the end of March and early April, he raised 498 million. You can see these dark blue lines showing how much he raises each and every week.
You need to do a full research on Strategy's preferred stock if you want to learn for real how it works — with the dividend, how he attracts capital, what kind of consequences he gets by issuing more preferred stock because his liabilities increase. It's a full rabbit hole. For us, just analyzing the Bitcoin price, we can see here how much capital the market is giving him.
You can see here that towards the middle of the month, historically he's been able to raise quite a lot of money, but this time around in May you see he's struggling a bit. Currently he's raised 203 million, but he now just has two more days — today, Wednesday, and tomorrow, Thursday — to raise before the ex-dividend date happens and he cannot raise anymore. Again, if you don't understand it, don't worry — you need to do more research about Strategy's preferred stock yourself. I'm just pointing things out here.
The conclusion out of all of this is that you cannot trade based on this. You simply cannot trade based on the news or what someone else is doing, because there's no way for us to know whether someone else's buy pressure is big enough and can be sustained for long enough in order to push the price up. For example, you see here we had quite a good run with Bitcoin, but still it is in a bear trend. Still, even though Saylor has been able to buy a lot, he has not pushed us above this high right here, and we still have a structure of just lower highs. It's a bear trend and just lower highs. Most altcoins are fully dead. Most altcoins have not come back in any meaningful way, and it is also a bear trend on the altcoin chart.
So the scoreboard is the price. The scoreboard is whether we are in a bull trend or a bear trend, whether we are creating higher highs or lower highs. This is very important. Nothing beats the scoreboard. Of course, many people want things to happen, so they believe that okay, now Saylor is going to save us. But just look at the scoreboard. And the scoreboard is super simple. The scoreboard is still telling us that we have to be cautious. We have to be risk-off. It is still a bear trend. Very important.
So what kind of verdict do we give to Saylor? Is it a point to the bulls or is it a point to the bears? At the end of the day, of course, it's good that Saylor is relentless. He's buying more and more Bitcoin. He's trying to be creative, creating new instruments to raise more money to buy Bitcoin, and the market has given him billions of dollars right here. So that's definitely a point for the bulls.
However, the price is created at the margin. Having a bunch of money and blasting it into the market is not enough. You need continued, sustained buy pressure because the price is created at the margin — it is the last trade that decides the whole price. You may have billions of buy pressure, but if no one else comes and continues to buy, the prices will fall. That's why, seeing that he now only has two days more to buy Bitcoin in May based on the ex-dividend date, it is concerning. He will likely have to increase the dividend that he pays on Strategy's preferred stock until the next ex-dividend day in June to attract more capital. Let's see how he will handle it. But the thing is, we're not seeing acceleration in the raising of money — we see a deceleration. So although it has been a point for the bulls, this is not something that is useful to us to trade on.
The Hidden Clue: Volume at Market Bottoms
However, there is a very important, very useful thing on the chart which I will speak about now — the hidden clue that we've been waiting for.
Let's look at the old cycle from 2020 and 2019. You see that you have massive volume when the actual bottom occurs, and then we go up only. Even here we had this bottom right here, and you see that the volume was higher than it was before. This was quite a high-volume event. The bottom is normally a high-volume event.
If we now proceed to the next bottom, which was right here in 2022 at the end of 2022, you see the massive volume. The comeback in the price is also accompanied by massive, massive volume.
If we now look at what has happened in 2026 — you kind of see it yourself. In my opinion, we have not had any kind of big capitulation or any kind of meaningful event that would create big enough volume for us to call this the macro bottom. Now, there is an argument to be made that we did see kind of a big candle right here on the volume when we went here. But if you just zoom out, you see that historically it's not really that meaningful.
Now, could this volume candle signal the bottom? Potentially — it's not impossible. And that's why, with all of the ideas and with all of the positioning we have, we have clear invalidation. Should Bitcoin go bullish here on the money line, we will be bullish as well. Now it's bearish. Now we don't see any big volume. Now we see these lower highs.
So for us, the strategy stays the same. What could happen is that we actually go above here and we go into a bull trend and we continue up. That in itself could create a lot of volume. The fact that we have a reversal — and if we see a lot of volume — then it will be a very big signal that yes, the bull market is back for real. Like for example, right here you did see this massive green candle when the trend was already bullish and we started to go up. This was a massive green volume candle — not at the bottom, but just confirming that there's a lot of bullishness. The market makers are buying a lot of supply. When you have big candles, it means that they are loading up.
Risk-Off in Crypto, Risk-On Elsewhere
So personally, as you've probably guessed, I am risk-off when it comes to crypto. But the thing is, you need to realize that there are many trends happening all the time. For example, you look at NASDAQ, you look at S&P — they have been in a massive bull trend and they're just pushing higher. So by being in a bear trend, or trying to stay in an asset while it is in a bear trend and just hoping it reverses, not only do you lose money, you also lose the opportunity to participate in other markets — like for example what's happening with the stock market, with AI chips, with AI stocks, and so on and so forth.
NASDAQ wants to open higher — bull trend. S&P will open higher — bull trend. You have all of the different stocks that you can see on the money scanner. Here you can see the gains in stocks since the recent bull flip. We can go here to the US and see what flipped within the last month on the weekly. And you see, for example, that since one year ago, Western Digital is up a thousand percent — when it flipped bullish, it was the time to enter, and it's now up a thousand percent. Real Mada is up 782% eleven months ago. You have all of the different stocks. SanDisk — since four months ago, up 400%. And it's only one of the trends. It had many bull trends in the last year. You see here a massive pump, then another big fat bull trend right here.
Trends are all about being in the right asset at the right time. And when it's bear, it doesn't mean the end of the world. It doesn't mean that you just sit around and do nothing. There is an endless amount of assets that are pumping each and every day.
Conclusion: The Scoreboard Still Favors Caution
Personally, I don't know whether we will repeat 2022 or not. No one knows — to be clear, no one knows. But based on the signals, I think the cards are still not stacked in our favor to be heavy crypto yet. In the stock market, they've been stacked in our favor for a long time. In crypto, not yet. That will change at some point, and I will keep you guys updated.