A top Coinbase researcher says signs of a long-term crypto bear market are starting to emerge.

David Duong, the global head of research at Coinbase, says in a new analysis that the 200-day moving average (MA) indicates bearishness for Bitcoin (BTC) and the Coinbase 50 Index (COIN50), which tracks the performance of the 50 largest digital assets by market cap.

“As Bitcoin’s role as a ‘store of value’ continues to grow, we think a holistic evaluation of crypto’s aggregate market activity will be needed to better define bull and bear markets for the asset class, particularly as we’re likely to see increasingly diverse behavior in its expanding sectors.

Nevertheless, both BTC and the COIN50 index have recently broken below their respective 200-day MAs, which signals potential bearish long-term trends in the overall market. This is consistent with the fall in the total crypto market cap and decline in venture capital funding for this space, hallmarks of a potential crypto winter rising.”

The analyst says if a crypto bear market does set in, a bullish reversal could start taking shape sometime between July and September.

“Thus, we think this warrants taking a defensive stance on risk for the time being, though we still believe that crypto prices may be able to find their floor in mid-to-late 2Q25 – setting up a better 3Q25.”

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