The Bitcoin drawdown below $75,000 has market participants debating a familiar question: how long does a bear market last when the data refuses to improve. CryptoQuant head of research Julio Moreno, speaking on The Milk Road Show on Feb. 2, argued that most major demand and liquidity indicators are still signaling weakness and that the bottoming process could take months, not weeks.<\/p>\n
Moreno\u2019s core framework is CryptoQuant\u2019s \u201cBull Score Index<\/a>,\u201d a composite of 10 metrics spanning on-chain valuation, liquidity conditions, market data, and a single technical trend input. \u201cThe index goes from zero to 100. Zero is the most bearish, 100 is the most bullish,\u201d he said. \u201cFirst the index is at zero, which is extremely bearish territory [\u2026] and it has been between like zero and 10 for the last maybe month and a half [\u2026] What it\u2019s telling us is there\u2019s too much weakness in either the data [or] in the markets.\u201d<\/p>\n He pointed to how quickly the same index flipped in October, when a liquidation event accelerated the shift from bullish to bearish readings. In early October the index hit 80, \u201cwell inside bullish territory\u201d before collapsing toward 20\u201330 in \u201ca few days,\u201d a move Moreno interpreted as a momentum failure that turned a late-cycle rally into a short-lived spike.<\/p>\n Moreno\u2019s bigger point was about lead time. He said the index \u201ctends to become [\u2026] bearish before there\u2019s a big correction in prices,\u201d framing it as an early-warning system rather than a lagging confirmation tool. On the show, he summarized the current regime bluntly: Bitcoin is \u201cwell in bear market,\u201d and \u201cthe data is just not supportive of any meaningful reversal.\u201d<\/p>\n On demand, Moreno highlighted US spot Bitcoin ETFs, which he said shifted into net selling<\/a> in Q4 and remained a drag into early 2026. He cited year-to-date flows showing ETFs had sold more than 10,000 BTC in January, compared with purchasing 46,000 BTC in the same period a year earlier. \u201cIf ETFs are net sellers then it\u2019s not supportive for prices,\u201d he said, adding that any sustained recovery would likely require that demand to stabilize and grow again.<\/p>\n The same dynamic showed up in the Coinbase premium<\/a>, the price spread between Coinbase and offshore exchanges such as Binance. Moreno described the premium as a proxy for US demand and said it flipped negative in November and has stayed negative \u201cmost of the time\u201d since. Historically, he argued, bull markets have been \u201cdriven by [\u2026] higher US demand,\u201d and the persistence of a discount suggests the US bid hasn\u2019t returned, even after the drawdown.<\/p>\n Moreno also pointed to stablecoin liquidity<\/a> as a missing tailwind. He tracked the 60-day change in USDT market cap, a proxy for fresh capital entering the trading ecosystem, and said growth has effectively stalled since mid-October. New issuance tends to land on exchanges, he explained, \u201cand provides [\u2026] dry powder for then traders buying crypto,\u201d tying stablecoin expansion directly to market-wide liquidity conditions.<\/p>\n Beyond ETFs and stablecoins, Moreno said CryptoQuant\u2019s longer-term Bitcoin demand growth model is hovering near zero on a year-over-year basis. \u201cWhat drives bull markets is this [\u2026] growth in demand, the demand waves,\u201d he said, but since October that growth has slowed sharply. In his view, it helps explain why downside has persisted even as the market searches for a durable base.<\/p>\n Leverage positioning has also deteriorated. Moreno used perpetual futures funding rates as a read on the appetite to hold long exposure and said the one-year average funding rate trend is pointing lower: \u201cless appetite to go long\u201d while short-term funding flips need to be interpreted differently depending on whether the market is in a bull or bear regime.<\/p>\n How Deep Into the Bitcoin Bear Market Are We Now? w\/ @cryptoquant_com<\/a> Head of Research @jjcmoreno<\/a><\/p>\n Bitcoin is trading CHEAPER on Coinbase than Binance.<\/p>\n That almost never happens in bull markets.<\/p>\n This one signal tells you who is NOT buying the dip.<\/p>\n Tune in to know more<\/p>\n