BTC falls below $100,000, is this really the start of a Bear Market?

Reality is Heartbreaking: On the evening of the 4th at 11 PM, BTC plummeted from 104k and directly smashed through the psychological barrier of 100k by 5 AM on the 5th, reaching a low of 98944, marking the first time in four months that this line has been breached. It is now hovering around 101k. ETH has seen a 50% slump from 3500 to 3057 (-10%), and SOL is even worse, dropping directly to 145.

How panicked is the market:

• The fear index is only 20, a six-month low.
• $20.95 billion in liquidations across the entire market in 24 hours (of which long positions accounted for $16.82 billion)
• The financing rate for BTC perpetual contracts has been directly cut by 50%: from an average of 338 million USD in mid-August to now 127 million, speculation enthusiasm has completely cooled off.

Not just the crypto world is crashing: The U.S. stock market isn't doing any better. On Tuesday, all three major indices in the U.S. fell (Dow -0.53%, S&P -1.17%, Nasdaq -2%), with Tesla down 5% and Nvidia down 4%. Legendary investor Michael Burry (, the guy from The Big Short ), just revealed he is shorting Palantir and Nvidia, which directly sparked market panic. Spot gold also broke the 4000 mark. The South Korean stock market KOSPI even fell 3.3%, triggering a circuit breaker.

Are institutions withdrawing?

• BTC spot ETFs have seen continuous net outflows since mid-October, with the largest two days recording outflows of $47 billion and $48.8 billion.
• ETH spot ETFs have also begun to leak, with a net outflow for four consecutive days, averaging 8-18 billion USD per day.
• Bloomberg analysts say this is a “two steps forward, one step back” rhythm, and we are currently in the retracement phase.

But there are also optimistic voices:

• The Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise believes this is more like a bottom rather than the start of a bear market, retail investors are “extremely desperate,” but institutions are still steadily buying ETFs.
• The founder of LD Capital continues to buy the dip, insisting that the fundamentals of ETH have not changed and that the scale of stablecoins is still growing.
• Analyst Ban Muxia predicts that this may be a complex lateral adjustment, which will ultimately stabilize around 84k, with a possible rebound to 116k before a slow decline.

Key Issue: Market liquidity is severely lacking. Wintermute points out that global liquidity is increasing, but funds are not entering the crypto market - although stablecoins have grown by 50% to 50 billion, ETF inflows have stagnated, and DAT activity has also died. This is the real crux of the problem.

In simple terms: This wave may not necessarily be a bear market, but rather an institution washing the plates while retail investors are cutting their losses. As long as the U.S. government doesn't continue to mess around, the purchasing power of institutions should be able to support the market. However, it will indeed be quite tough in the short term.