Nobody could argue that 2022 was anything but a bear market. After Bitcoin reached an ATH in November of 2021 we saw the bear market develop in classic fashion by losing support at key technical levels. While the bear was playing out in somewhat predictable fashion, the market was caught off guard by the events that led to the FTX crash in November 2022. Because the contagion from FTX had a devastating ripple effect that was felt by the largest institutions with crypto exposure as well as banks, I actually expected prices to fall even lower.
At the time, fear and fighting among institutional players like Galaxy, Gemini and Grayscale (under DCG) who were among SBF’s largest institutional victims added to the concern that price would grind down towards the lower teens, yet somewhat remarkably and perhaps not so coincidentally on January 1, 2023 Bitcoin started to rally. What was first considered weekend whale games evolved long past the weekend, and in fact, through Q1/2023 I identified an entity on FireCharts which I nicknamed “Notorious B.I.D.” that was double stacking large blocks of bid liquidity to push price higher. There was a pattern to the behavior that made it somewhat predictable and tradable. Those moves were well documented in my X feed during that period of time. Once price reached $25k that entity disappeared. Even without the help of that manipulation pushing price up, and despite the fact that the macroeconomic situation was horrible, the geopolitical situation went from bad to worse and the US political situation evolved from a dysfunctional sh*t show to a full blown circus, the market continued to rally.
Now, nearly 12 months and > 150% from the day the rally began, the debate between bulls and bears over whether this is a confirmed bull market or a sequence of bear market distribution rallies literally continues today. While it’s understandable that someone could look at 150% and immediately assume bull market, it does require a deeper understanding of what distribution and accumulation look like. From my view, that still isn’t as clear as one would expect. Historically, the Purple Class of Whales with orders in the $100k – $1M range have had the most influence over BTC price direction. The order flow data I’ve been monitoring on Binance shows that through most of the year they (along with larger MegaWhales) have been buying dips and distributing significantly more than they bought on those dips on the uptrends that…
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