Has January Been How You Thought It Would Be at the Beggining of the Year in Crypto?
The final year of a bull market is not easy to anticipate. But I'm sure you have some thoughts regarding potential scenarios.
My scenarios have been rather broad, because frankly, I didn't think one could get a more detailed picture of what would happen.
My first scenario was that we might have a very strong Q1 and beginning of Q2, followed by a serious cool off during the summer, and heating up for the final push at the end of summer or beginning of fall. Of course, there could have been differences between BTC and alts, and between various categories of alts.
This scenario is still possible, but the more time passes from Q1, the more unlikely it becomes, in this form. Especially alts, with some exceptions, don't have time to heat up and explode in the remaining time.
The second scenario I had in mind was that we might have a rather dull first half of the year, with some fireworks and scares here and there and for particular assets, and a more serious heating up in the second part of the year as the bull market approaches its "natural" end.
The third and last scenario is the following: Bitcoin continues to attract incredible amounts of funds and continues to go up or hold its value (with some pullbacks), while on the alts side things would be quite like wild west, some going up, others going down, and without a "proper" alt season. To this eventuality contributes the incredible number of tokens in existence, all wanting to attract capital. On the alts side, if you manage to hold the ones going up, you would be quite happy. I'm hoping Hive would be in this category. It certainly has attracted enough attention - there are people making good profits with HIVE without ever touching our ecosystem. While it is a pity they don't try out Hive, it is how things work, and it's probably much better to have them interested at least in our HIVE coin than not.
Unfortunately, if you hold the ones going down and continue to hold them in the hope of an alt season, in the 3rd scenario, where we won't have an alt season of the same type as before, you may end up holding a bunch of dead weight. Unless the coins you hold have a utility you are interested in for the long term, in which case, price is only a temporary measurement of the balance between demand and offer.
Regarding January, it was a month with everything. We had a selloff at the middle of the month (a week before Trump was inaugurated was the lowest), we didn't really have a "sell the news" event, but didn't go higher either. We also had a new ATH for BTC on inauguration day, slightly higher than the previous one. Since inauguration, BTC is kind of flat, slowly down.
Actually, if we take a step back and look on the daily chart, it looks like we have been trading flat, in accumulation/distribution mode, for over two months already.
Alts have been all over the place in January, a few going up (Solana, Hive, etc.), most going down, especially in the last part of the month. Actually, HIVE lived off the pump from the beginning of the year, pulling back from there, with two intermediary smaller pumps (the last one after news broke about potential sanctions against Upbit for irregularities).
Trump managed to screw things up for the alts with his meme coins, because that market cap came from somewhere, and mostly I believe it came from alt coins (which, include other meme coins). Either that, or it came from BTC too, but that this one there is a constant buying demand as well, through Microstrategy and other new whales that are accumulating regardless of price.
At the same time, Trump avoided to single out Bitcoin in his executive order for digital assets, which pissed off Bitcoin maxis, but is probably a good sign for the crypto sphere as a whole.
At the beginning of the year I thought January would be more bullish. If February starts the same way, my first scenario seems to not be an option anymore.
So, how did you find the month of January in crypto? What do you expect for the rest of the year?
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In reality I think we don't call out alts that have underperformed. Eth pushes the market, I mean the alt market, but in the last three years the Blockchain (eth) hasn't built anything or gotten better. A lot of alts will underperform I guess. However the ones that will do well will do very well. Personally I like to see what February and March holds, but the narratives this bull might be something we might not be able to predict with TAs
Trump and his family have a lot of ETH and ETH-based tokens. I would certainly not rule out ETH for this bull market. I do agree that there will be enough alts that will underperform. When we are talking millions of tokens or whatever their total number reached, it's unavoidable that some of them will be ignored. Many of these will be meme coins.
Yeah, I have no doubt that Eth will shine, I just think the Blockchain has been the same since 2021 and vitalik and his devs hadn't been doing much.
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January has actually seemed relatively quiet, except from sudden spikes here and there, on some piece of news.
I'm thinking we'll likely be pretty flat for a while, but if there are tangible crypto-positive actions from the Trump Administration, we'll likely see people start to pile on, BTC at first and then perhaps alts.
I would expect the cycle to peak late in the year, with a flood of profit taking for fiscal/tax year 2025 duking it out against a wave of "last minute FOMO" people who'll end up losing their shirt and hating on crypto during the 1st half of 2026...
But I'm just guessing.
Yes, in retrospect, and taking a step back and by comparison with pre US elections days, we didn't have much movement since.
So, you're thinking Q1 won't be a major push, but rather scenario 2 seems more plausible with a gradual heating up toward the end of the year?
Sounds pretty much how they all ended up. Too bad for the late comers, but usually it's a hard learning experience at first.
Things are changing but those who are patient will definitely get good profit this year and those who panic will never get profit from this market this year is enough for all of us. is more important.
Patience is important this year... until it isn't. This is also a year when we need to take action, if we want to secure some profits.
I think January was just a rest period. The Trump effect on crypto can't be understated, but I think we were waiting to see how things played out when he entered office. He hasn't done much to crypto yet but maybe he just just focused on the other issues. I think people have expectations and if they aren't kept, the market will move in one direction or another.
I think the greed is too high to tank the market for unmet expectations, unless this administration starts doing stupid things that hurt crypto. If they also do real positive things, maybe the moon is too close... 😄
My gut feeling tells me we are going to have a sort of remake of 2017.
That was an awesome bull market and would be close to my scenario 2.
Hehe January was actually quite uneventful by crypto standards. As for the rest of the year, I still think it will peak sometime this year and then a "crash" like what we used to see in the previous cycles, but I know some people will always say "this time is different". Hahaha. I guess time will tell.
I doubt this time will be any different. Maybe this is another reason why the cycle keeps working time and time again. Because it manages to convince some every time that the cycle will break, and then wipes out their gains in their bear market.
Makes sense! :)
Trying to time anything has never been a strong point of mine, maybe if we do get an alt season i get lucky and am in the right place, im never going to be putting in anything I can’t afford to lose so let’s see how the year plays out.
!BBH
That's always the smart and safe choice. Gamblers could win, but they could also lose everything. That's why this continues to be a smart advice in risky investments.
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