The bad news is: We have been in a crypto winter since January 2025. The good news is: We are likely closer to the end of the winter than to its beginning.
I want to state something obvious, because I believe it will help you make beneficial decisions in the coming months: We are in a full-blown crypto winter.
I find that few people online or in the mainstream media are talking about this, but it is an indisputable fact. Bitcoin is down 39% from its all-time high in October 2025, Ethereum is down 53%, and many other crypto assets have fallen even more.
It's important to recognize it for what it is. This is not a bull market correction, nor a dip. This is a full-blown, harsh winter comparable to 2022, as brutal as what Leonardo DiCaprio endured in *The Revenant*. The causes of this winter range from excessive leverage to large-scale profit-taking by early players.
For me, acknowledging and accepting this has made everything incredibly clear.
Why are crypto prices falling despite continuous positive news in areas like adoption and regulation? Because we are in the deep end of the crypto winter. Why is the new Fed Chair a Bitcoin supporter, yet the Crypto Fear & Greed Index is in the extreme fear zone? Because we are in a crypto winter.
Those who experienced the past winters of 2018 or 2022 will remember that in the depths of winter, positive news means nothing. We won't see a rebound just because Wall Street is hiring aggressively or Morgan Stanley is increasing its crypto exposure. These things are important in the long term, but not now. Crypto winter doesn't end in euphoria; it ends in exhaustion.
So, when will the winter end? The good news is: I believe we are nearing the end.
The Historical Pattern of Crypto Winters
Crypto winters typically last about 13 months. For example, Bitcoin peaked in December 2017 and bottomed in December 2018; it peaked in October 2021 and bottomed in November 2022.
By this cycle's logic, we still have a difficult period ahead. After all, Bitcoin peaked in October 2025, so wouldn't we have to wait until November 2026? I don't think so.
After further analysis of the current winter, I've become increasingly aware that it actually started in January 2025. We just couldn't see it because inflows into ETFs and Digital Asset Trusts (DATs) masked the truth.
ETF and DAT Flows Masked the 2025 Winter
Take a close look at this chart of the performance of the components of the Bitwise 10 Large Cap Crypto Index since January 1, 2025.
They clearly fall into three categories:
· First-category assets (BTC, ETH, XRP) performed relatively okay, down 10.3% to 19.9%
· Second-category assets (SOL, LTC, LINK) experienced a standard bear market, down 36.9% to 46.2%
· Third-category assets (ADA, AVAX, SUI, DOT) were decimated, down 61.9% to 74.7%
The core difference between these three categories essentially boils down to whether institutions have channels to invest in them. First-category assets received massive support from ETF/DAT inflows throughout the year; second-category assets had ETFs approved in 2025; third-category assets never did. (Note: XRP is an exception. It didn't have an ETF at the start of 2025 but performed well. The reason might be that XRP faced a life-or-death lawsuit from the U.S. SEC at the start of 2025, which was dropped in early 2025, leading to a significant rally for the asset.)
The scale of institutional support is staggering. For example, during the period shown in the chart, ETFs and DATs cumulatively bought 744,417 Bitcoin, worth approximately $75 billion. Imagine where Bitcoin would be without this $75 billion of support? I suspect it would be down about 60%.
The retail market has been in a brutal winter since January 2025. Institutional money just masked this fact for some assets for a while.
It's Always Darkest Before the Dawn
What needs to be remembered right now is that there is a lot of tangible, positive development happening in crypto. Regulatory progress is real, institutional adoption is real, stablecoins and asset tokenization are real, and Wall Street's embrace is real.
In a bear market, positive news gets ignored, but it doesn't disappear. It gets stored as potential energy. Once the clouds part and market sentiment returns to normal, this pent-up energy is released in a vengeful manner. What can disperse the clouds? Strong economic growth triggering a broad risk-asset rally, positive signals from the Clarity Act, signs of sovereign nation Bitcoin adoption, or simply the passage of time.
As a veteran who has lived through multiple crypto winters, I can tell you that the feeling right before the winter ends feels very much like this: despair, helplessness, gloom. But the current market pullback has done nothing to change the fundamentals of the crypto market.
I believe we will rebound faster and more violently. After all, the winter started in January 2025. Spring can't be far away.
