Bitcoin bear market ‘over’ as price metric copies 2023 recovery: CryptoQuant CEO

According to some metrics, Bitcoin (BTC) has ended its bear market as a composite BTC price indicator flips bullish for the first time since October 2025.

Key points:

• Bitcoin has exited its 2026 bear market, Ki Young Ju says as a profitability metric prints a positive reading of 0.042.
• The breakout from negative to positive numbers repeats a bull-market recovery signal also visible in early 2023.
• Concerns remain over insufficient market liquidity to support a macro BTC price trend change.

Bitcoin profit metric offers first bull signal in ten months

The latest data from onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant has led its CEO, Ki Young Ju, to call time on Bitcoin’s 2026 bear market.

In an X post on Wednesday, Ki flagged the first positive reading on CryptoQuant’s Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator since early October.

“The Bitcoin bear cycle is over,” he wrote in accompanying commentary.

The indicator is derived from the P&L Index — initially devised by CryptoQuant’s head of research — and measures the P&L Index’s distance from its 365-day moving average. The P&L Index itself is composed of several onchain profitability metrics: the market value to realized value (MVRV) ratio, net unrealized profit/loss (NUPL) and the spent output profit ratio (SOPR). Together they provide an overall picture of Bitcoin investors’ realized and unrealized profits and losses. Values above zero for the Bull/Bear indicator point to bullish phases in the BTC price cycle as profitability improves.