BITCOIN BEARS DESTROYED - WE ARE NOT GOING TO $35K

Indexed: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Good day everyone. My name is Adam Livingston and I am the Bitcoin wizard.

[00:00:03]The Bitcoin bears are absolutely ridiculous lately. I can no longer stand these people on Bitcoin X. They are refreshing their stupid little charts, making comparisons to 2022 to 2018.

[00:00:17]They're comparing the current regime of Bitcoin versus the regime of the FTX collapse. And these idiots are actually claiming that 35K, 50K Bitcoin, these things are certainties. It's the 4-year cycle, bro. Oh my gosh. It's obvious.

[00:00:36]Sell now. Come back in October when we bought them at 35K. If I see another one of these stupid clowns on my timeline again, I might have a stroke. So, today we are going to talk about the Bitcoin bears. And no, we're not going to 35k Bitcoin. And I am going to be detailing a very mathematically elegant proof that this case, this base case 35k Bitcoin case, how ridiculously stupid it is.

[00:01:03]Because I'm a Bitcoin permable, okay, I know the asset is going to a million dollars. It's very obvious that it is given the fact they always just have to print more money. And when you're measuring Bitcoin in something that will be printed in perpetuity, pretty easy to see what happens. Bitcoin is a great product market fit for the money printing scheme. But all these people, they're saying Bitcoin is going to 35K, it's going to 40K, it's going to 50.

[00:01:28]Okay. Based on what exactly? Your old chart from 2018 or your Discord server where everybody has these skull avatars and three bankrupt altcoin wallets. So this whole deep bear call that everybody's freaking out about, you know, the cycle's going to play out.

[00:01:45]We're going to hit 35K. We're going to hit 50. It sounds very scary, but when you actually run the numbers, the whole thing starts to look absolutely insane because the bears, they're still using this old cycle Bitcoin assumption on a completely different Bitcoin market.

[00:02:03]They're taking the volatility of Bitcoin in 2014, 2018, and 2022, and they're dragging it into 2026 and pretending that nothing has changed. It's all the same. We're going to see draw downs of equal magnitude. Okay. Yet somehow ignoring the fact that the upside has been muted versus other cycles. Spot ETFs exists now. Institutional custody exists. Corporate Treasury adoption is just gearing up right now. Obviously, so the marginal buyer of Bitcoin is no longer some 22year-old named Kyle using 100x leverage on a laptop that's covered in his vape juice. Bitcoin has matured.

[00:02:42]The data has showed it. And once you actually understand what is in the data, you have to be bullish on Bitcoin. There is no other option. If you are bearish at 77K Bitcoin in 2026, you are a stupid idiot The bears are pricing in a Bitcoin that died several cycles ago.

[00:03:02]They're sitting in a burning blockbuster calling Netflix a fad. These people are clowns. You are going to love this content today cuz it's super bullish and the data is absolutely amazing. If you could do me a favor, like this video, subscribe to the channel if you have not yet to support my mission of spreading the orange gospel of Bitcoin to the masses. And also, before I get started, really want to take a brief moment to thank Horizon for sponsoring this video.

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[00:04:12]Literally plug it in, transfer my Bitcoin over. It is quite literally that easy. Dual chip security architecture, tempered glass display. This thing is amazing. It is the Swiss vault for your Bitcoin. And also, if you use the code in the description, you get 5% off. And guess what? This is the easiest way and the safest way to cold store your Bitcoin. A lot of people get scared of cold storing their Bitcoin. All I got to say, it's extremely easy and you must do it to protect your family sovereignty, obviously. Do your loved ones have a safe way to store their Bitcoin? If they don't, do you even love them? Use code Adam BTC to get 5% off. Link in the description below. So let's start with my core argument today and it is very simply that Bitcoin's realized volatility has absolutely collapsed from prior regimes. Especially when you see the bears comparing today's price action versus drop offs in 2018 or 2022. They cannot ignore the volatility. The old Bitcoin was a toddler drinking monster energy through a bendy straw, running around a Walmart with scissors and screaming about monetary revolution. The new Bitcoin toddler still has its issues, sure, but now it has Black Rockck paperwork and an ETF rapper. So, this is what you must understand. Before FTX, remember FTX in 2022? Yeah, what a great time in the assets history.

[00:05:33]Bitcoin's 90-day realized volatility averaged around 75.8%.

[00:05:39]But after FTX, in the post FTX, post22 regime, it has averaged 46.5%.

[00:05:47]That is a massive drop in the volatility of the asset. Now even better, the maximum volatility in the post FTX regime has been 65.5% which is well below the average volatility of the last regime. So think about how insane that is. The craziest volatility that we have ever seen in the current regime is calmer than an average day in the old cocaine raccoon era of Bitcoin. The old market was a casino on fire. The new market is still a casino, but now we have ETF flows and compliance officers. The asset is changing structurally. It is changing. And this is what the Bitcoin bears don't understand. Volatility is the engine of huge draw downs. You need violent volatility to create violent crashes. A 70% or 80% or 90% Bitcoin bare market doesn't fall out of the sky like a drunk pelican. For anybody who's lived through them, you guys know that it requires forced selling, liquidations, panic.

[00:06:51]It's reflexive collapsed, all of that forced selling, leverage explosion nonsense. It's this massive structural break. The bears are calling for the outcome of that kind of event without naming the event. And that's the problem. It's like saying, "Your house is gonna burn down, but if you ask why, you just save vibes." And the math is on the side of the bulls. The math is not on the side of the bears. So I went ahead and made the structural volatility collapse chart of Bitcoin just for you guys today. The dots here you can see they are just collapsing. The 2013 top right here, 2017 top, 2021 top, and the 2025 top. Ever since then, we have seen a slight increase in the volatility of Bitcoin. The yaxis is the 90-day realized volatility on an annualized basis. It is totally going down. The trend is undeniable. And interesting here, you guys can kind of see this red line across the chart. That is signifying the pre2022 volatility regime floor. The green is the post2024 V regime ceiling. And the difference is 60% volatility versus 30% volatility right here. And this is where my thesis gets extremely spicy and leaves the bears bleeding out in the street. Across Bitcoin's prior full cycles, the maximum bare market draw down has almost been perfectly explained by the realized volatility at the cycle peak. And fun fact for you, the relationship has an R squared of 975.

[00:08:27]For the normies out there, the R squar tells you how much of the variation in one thing is explained by another thing.

[00:08:35]So an R squared of 0.975, it means the relationship is basically walking into court with HD security footage, three witnesses, and the bear's fingerprints on the knife. The y-axis is the maximum cycle drawd down. The xaxis is the peak cycle 90-day realized volatility on a log scale here. Now what do you see plotted on a straight line here? Very simple. You see the 2011 bare market, 2014 bare market, 2018, 2022, and then we are seeing the star today.

[00:09:08]So you guys see how all of the draw downs are plotted neatly along this line. The bears calling for 35 Bitcoin would have this level of difference versus the trend right here and 50K would be here. It's just ridiculous.

[00:09:21]These people don't know what they're talking about. The prior cycles just line up beautifully. In 2011, the peak volatility was over 200% actually and Bitcoin crashed 93%. 2014 peak volatility was 142%. Bitcoin crashed 86%. 2018 peak volatility 96%, Bitcoin crashed 83%. In 2022, peak volatility was 68.3% and Bitcoin crashed 76.7%.

[00:09:49]Higher peak volatility means deeper draw down. Lower peak volatility means a shallower draw down. What you're witnessing right now is a master relationship. Now, if you plug in this latest cycle, this latest 2025 top in October of 2025, Bitcoin's realized volatility was only 30%. That's correct, 30. That is in a completely different world. It's not even in the same zip code, 30%. When you plug 30% into a historical draw down model like this, it implies a max draw down of 65.5%.

[00:10:28]And from the peak of 124,000, that gives you a worstcase cycle around 43,000. And that is the absolute worst case. That is the dark basement number. So these bears that are calling for 35K as if it's a certainty. They are calling from a draw down of about 72% from peak. That is deeper than the volatility regime supports. They need a volatility shock.

[00:10:55]They need something to break. They need a major major black swan catalyst that of course none of them are naming.

[00:11:02]They're just waddling into the timeline like they're these Victorian plague doctors just saying I sense 35K. like their Nostradamus. Thank you. Very helpful. Please return to your haunted attic. So, now let's talk about the cycle amplitude. Okay. Yes, the cycle amplitude. And this is where the Bitcoin bears are really going to start to sweat through their little recession cosplay doomer boomer jackets. Bitcoin's upside overshoots have compressed dramatically every single cycle. In 2011, Bitcoin peaked at around,98% above the power law trend. That is insane. In 2013, 991% 2017 522%. 2021 194% in 2025 25% above the trend line.

[00:11:50]And that is the whole point. Bitcoin did not have this euphoric blowoff top like we all expected last year. There was no taxi driver explaining hash rate to you at 2:00 in the morning. Your barber was probably talking about mortgage rates, not opening up a Binance account while you were sitting in his chair. The 2025 top was compressed. It was muted. It was a grind. Bitcoin moved through the power lock trend just a little bit. Made a new high and then it rolled over without the classic religious mania that we have seen in prior cycles. This is what that has looked like with the decline of volatility. Each cycle peak is 39% of the prior cycles overshoot magnitude.

[00:12:33]And then the 2025 cycle top even broke this pattern by being even more compressed than the trend. This is what the compression in the power law overshoots has looked like over time.

[00:12:46]And for some reason the Bitcoin bears look at this drop in the volatility of the asset and they think that historical draw downs are equally as likely. Yes, equally as likely. Yes, the volatility to the upside has compressed this much, but totally the volatility to the downside is exactly the same. FTX style drop to 35K equally as likely. So, I went ahead and made this chart for you guys cuz you guys are probably asking, Adam, Bitcoin sitting at 778K right now.

[00:13:17]I'm super depressed. When is NGU going to happen? I'm depressed. Help me, please, Lord. So, let's zoom into where we're at in the cycle because this is bullish. We are 227 days past the cycle top. Bitcoin is down 37.8% from the top. Now, that sounds ugly.

[00:13:35]Nobody enjoys being down 38%. That is the kind of number that makes a man stand silently in front of a fridge at midnight wondering if free will was a mistake. But no, it was not because if we compare it to prior cycles at the same point, it is a different story. And this is just proving my thesis further.

[00:13:52]So let's compare this cycle draw down to 227 days in other cycle draw downs from the top. In 2013, Bitcoin was already minus 91%. In 2017, Bitcoin had already touched 70% down. In 2021, Bitcoin had already touched 72% down. So at day 227, in prior modern cycles, Bitcoin was deep in the sewer, fighting rats for cigarette butts. this cycle. The cycle low was February 5th at 62,858.

[00:14:25]I believe that was the close. We briefly touched 59K, $800, something like that.

[00:14:30]We did hit 60K briefly, but the price has already rallied back to 77,000. We actually hit 82,000 briefly and that is about a 23% rally from the cycle low.

[00:14:41]So, if you look at the orange line here, we have rallied far beyond where we were at in prior cycles. So, right now, the bears have to make the case. Right now, we're going to roll over. We're going to take out the February low by another massive amount. We're going to smash through the 4-year moving average of the price and print 35K. Okay, that would require Bitcoin to drop another 55% from the current price, another 800, $900 billion leaving the Bitcoin network just because you think it will happen. From here, after already finding a low, after volatility has totally been crushed, after the ETF era has begun, after ETFs have seen net inflows, despite a 40% correction in the asset, after the upside amplitude has already compressed, after the deepest panic already failed to reach anything close to 35K, is it possible? Uh, yeah, sure. Anything is possible, I guess. But these people are talking about it like it's a certainty.

[00:15:44]So, honestly, you guys, I'm going to be talking a lot more on this channel about the 208 week moving average because that is 4 years. 208 divided by 52 that gives you a 4-year moving average of Bitcoin.

[00:15:56]And when you look at what that looks like, it means that when you smooth out the spot price a little bit, Bitcoin always goes up and to the right. The current 208we moving average is sitting at $59,779 will be 60K very very soon. And this is just another indicator that tells you why the bears who are certain of 40k Bitcoin are quite stupid people. 50,000 Bitcoin would be a minus6.4% 4% undershoot of that floor and a 35k Bitcoin would be a minus 41.5% undershoot which would be worse than the FTX collapse low. So calling for 35k Bitcoin means a worse than FTX event without you naming that event of course.

[00:16:45]So you're baking in a worse than FTX black swan event without naming that particular event. How does a 35K Bitcoin price make sense? This is the Bitcoin price since July of 2014. I went ahead and put a green line power law trend right over top of that price. And the blue line here is what that 208 moving average looks like. And this is the most bullish Bitcoin line in history. It only goes up into the right, doesn't it?

[00:17:16]Isn't that a glorious thing? I love it because it removes all of the volatility about the spot bitcoin price and at the end of the day you just got to look at that line. We go up and to the right. So this red here is the 35k to 50k bitcoin bare zone here. Now obviously these people calling for 35k to 50k bitcoin.

[00:17:37]Just look at what it took for the price to drop below that 208 week moving average. was literally a once in a century and a half type style black swan. That is what it took for Bitcoin to drop below that. Now, obviously, Bitcoin is considerably above that 208 week moving average. It's considerably below the long-term trend of the asset.

[00:17:59]Yet, the people calling for 35K, 50K Bitcoin, they are calling for a black swan type event to make it drop below that average. And of course, these people are not going to tell you what that event is because if they did, they wouldn't be able to come up with anything. They just think the price is going to drop because of vibes. And what's cool is that even after that 2017 runup, if you guys were around then, that was crazy when the price exploded above the power lock trend line, way beyond the 208 week moving average.

[00:18:30]Bitcoin's price didn't even drop below the 208 moving average right here.

[00:18:35]Didn't even touch the line. 2022 during CO it briefly broke it and then it took the FTX collapse crypto winner to totally destroy it and then the rest is history. Basically that has been the long-term floor for the asset. These people calling for 35k to 50k Bitcoin are claiming that we just break it again for some reason. For Bitcoin to hit 35K today, it's very simple. It would need to undersshoot that 208W week moving average line by 41.5% which would be worse than FTX. Yes, worse. So when someone says I think Bitcoin is going to 35K, what are they saying? They are saying, "I believe Bitcoin will experience a worse than FTX structural shock, but I have no idea what it is, when it happens, who causes it, or why it has not shown up in the volatility, the flows, the derivatives, the price structure, or any meaningful indicator. Now, 50K, that's a lot more plausible than 35K because it only requires that 16.4% undershoot of that 208 moving average.

[00:19:39]But even that kind of break if you look at history that requires a serious catalyst too. So deep bare targets sorry they require deep bare conditions and these people are not able to articulate what they are. Now we get to the Monte Carlo simulation. Now this sounds fancy but the idea is very simple. You simulate a huge number of possible future Bitcoin paths using today's Bitcoin price current volatility and a drift assumption using statistical analysis. I literally uploaded every single day of Bitcoin's price history in this model. I literally started from today's Bitcoin price $77,500 and then essentially I am baking in the annualized volatility of 42.3% and I am allowing drift toward the power lock trend. The result that I am getting is the probability of Bitcoin touching 35k Bitcoin within 12 months is about 0.47%.

[00:20:34]Yes, 0.47% 47% and people are treating it like it's a surefire thing. The probability of Bitcoin touching 50K within 12 months, 6.5%, Bitcoin retesting the February low only 27.5% and the median 12-month outcome is $122,644.

[00:20:55]This actually lines up extremely well with an expost analysis I did yesterday where I actually looked at the 208-week moving average and the year-over-year growth rate as well as prior cycle draw downs. I looked at the Bitcoin to gold ratio as well, the reversion, how long we are through this draw down. And I was getting about a median time to a 100% gain median throughout all of Bitcoin's price history. It was saying about 9 months from today. 9 and 1/2 months for 150k Bitcoin. So, this is telling us a median 12-month outcome of 122K. But we have the Bitcoin bears coming out telling us that this 0.47% probability is the base case. This is the distribution of all of those 50,000 simulations red line here is us touching that February 26 low. And this is the 12month minimum. Okay, the 12month minimum. This is a 12month forward distribution Monte Carlo scenario. And if we look at the classic spaghetti plot here, median path gets us to over 100k Bitcoin obviously, but that 95th percentile path, I see that bringing us close to 250K Bitcoin 1 year from today.

[00:22:12]And actually, this x-axis is actually trading days forward 250 days from now.

[00:22:17]So 95th percentile, that's super bullish. But obviously just given the median trend, super bullish numbers here. The fifth percentile scenario, way above 50K, way above 35K. So the bears are bloodied in the street. They're calling for death without naming the mechanism by which how we're going to hit that Bitcoin price. So, if you're asking what would break the thesis, uh, these things, a volatility regime shift somehow, even as clearly demonstrating that long-term structural decline in volatility. Somehow that reverses a real black swan event, unforeseen, but remember, the bears aren't naming it, and that's the problem. Violation of that 28w week moving average floor. That would be wild. Obviously, you see, it's only really happened for an extended period of time once in Bitcoin's price history. and somehow ETF flow reversals which obviously ETFs remaining a net buyer despite the huge Bitcoin price correction. So absent these conditions, I just think any bare sub 50K is totally smok and crack. And one more chart for you guys. This is really interesting.

[00:23:18]This is a zcore of each price target from today's price. Yes, not 126k all-time high from today. We would need a one standard deviation from today's price to hit 50k Bitcoin. But we would also need a one standard deviation above today's price to hit all-time high again. Right here, 124.7K. These people calling for a two standard deviation from today's price after we've already seen a close to 40% correction from the all-time high. These people are insane.

[00:23:48]They don't know what they're talking about. The compression of the volatility is literally the story here. 35K, these people aren't serious. 50k. These people aren't serious unless they name the black swan. The math is just telling us that Bitcoin is returning to its long-term power law trend. And the bears are just bloodied in the street. They're wrong. They are total clowns. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Adam Livingston. I am the Bitcoin Wizard. If you like this content, please like this video. Subscribe to the channel. That way you can support me spreading the orange gospel of Bitcoin to the masses.

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