We've hit the acceptance phase of the bear. James's framework: from $126K down to $80K, most people were still in denial, believing it was a bull market dip. The break below $80K in February was acceptance. Everyone now believes it's a bear. And that's typically when the price damage is mostly done. What follows is time pain, which can be brutal, but the capitulation has happened.

The on-chain data is screaming "bear market bottom." 50% of all coins are now underwater. That crossover between coins in profit and coins in loss has only happened at bear market bottoms. Every cycle. Less than 8% of coins moving in the last 30 days came from below $60K. The people who bought early are sitting tight. The selling is coming from people who bought high and are capitulating.

$50 billion has been reallocated from higher cost basis into this zone. Before we got here, less than 10% of total wealth was in the $60-70K range. Now it's 15.5%. New hands are absorbing supply from weak hands. And who's buying when headlines are "Bitcoin is dead" and price is down 50%? Probably not the type of investor who panic sells.

We're in the deep value zone by every mean reversion model. 200-day, 200-week, realized price, power law, pick your metric. At $70K and below, we're in the bottom 20% of all days. At $60K, we're entering the bottom 10%. Unless Bitcoin is completely broken (it's not), mean reversion suggests this is the accumulation zone.

Bitcoin only does something meaningful about 10 days per cycle. James's point: if you remove the 10 best days from any cycle, you're flat or down. Those days tend to happen early in the recovery. If you're trying to perfectly time the bottom, you'll probably miss the first three of those 10 days. That's why he says "buy the whole bottom" instead of trying to nail the exact low.

We wrestled with whether the bottom is in or if there's more pain ahead.

The case for more downside:
The bear might not be over. There could be a long grinding process ahead, maybe lower prices. We haven't had the time pain yet. FTX took us from $17.6K to $15.6K after months of ranging. The difference wasn't much in price, but the psychological grind was brutal. That part might still be coming.

The case for accumulating now:
Every signal that appears at bear market bottoms is appearing now. 50% of coins underwater. Massive capitulation events. Journalists feeling safe to publish "Bitcoin is dead" articles. The people who thought it was a bull market four weeks ago now have 30K price targets. That's the acceptance phase. And historically, most of the price damage is done by acceptance.

Where we landed:
James's framework: he doesn't believe the bear is over, but he believes we've had meaningful capitulation. The price damage is largely done. What's ahead is time pain. For long-term investors, that distinction matters. Whether the bottom is $60K or $50K or $55K, the difference is noise on a long enough time horizon. The goal isn't to nail the exact bottom. It's to be allocated for the 10 days that make the whole cycle.

If you're a long-term investor, this is the environment where wealth gets built. Not because it feels good. It doesn't. But because the signals that historically appear at bottoms are appearing now.

James's advice: stop trying to bottom-tick it. Buy the whole bottom. If you're DCA'ing through this zone, you're going to capture those 10 days that make the cycle. If you're waiting for confirmation that the bottom is in, you'll probably miss the first three of them.

The journalists are writing bear articles because it feels safe now. The people who were bullish four weeks ago now have 30K price targets. That's the psychology of bottoms. And if you've been through multiple cycles, you know this is where the asymmetry is the greatest.

This week's action: Separate time pain from price pain.

The price damage is largely done. What's ahead is the grind. The boring, painful, "when will this end" phase that tests everyone's conviction. That's where most people give up.

Ask yourself:

The smart move isn't to predict the exact bottom. It's to be positioned so that when the repricing happens, you're there for it. That means having your infrastructure right, your plan in place, and the conviction to execute when it feels the worst.

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— Jackson

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