Bull Market
A prolonged period of rising prices, typically defined as a 20% or greater increase from recent lows, accompanied by widespread optimism and strong investor confidence. Crypto bull markets are historically driven by Bitcoin halving cycles, institutional adoption, and new technology narratives.
“The 2020-2021 bull market saw Bitcoin rise from around $10,000 to over $69,000, fueled by institutional adoption and DeFi growth.”
Bear Market
A prolonged period of declining prices, typically defined as a drop of 20% or more from recent highs, accompanied by widespread pessimism and negative investor sentiment. Crypto bear markets can be especially severe, with drawdowns of 70-90% from all-time highs.
Market Capitalization
The total value of a cryptocurrency, calculated by multiplying the current price per coin by the circulating supply. Market cap is the primary metric for ranking cryptocurrencies by size and is used to categorize assets as large-cap (>$10B), mid-cap ($1B-$10B), or small-cap (<$1B).
Halving
A pre-programmed event that cuts the block reward for mining new blocks in half, reducing the rate at which new coins are created. Bitcoin's halving occurs every 210,000 blocks (approximately every 4 years) and is a core mechanism for enforcing its deflationary supply schedule. Halvings are historically correlated with subsequent bull markets due to reduced sell pressure from miners.