Has this been bitcoin's most resilient bear market?

Down 32% from $126K — far shallower than the 70–82% drops of past cycles. ETFs, cleared leverage and structural changes explain it. But one analyst says don't get too comfortable. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ SPONSORED BY Tuesday, October 6, 2026 Why bitcoin is down 'just' 32% a year after its record high of $126,000 A year ago today bitcoin hit $126,000. It's now at $85,453 — down 32%. In past cycles, the one-year mark meant down 70–82%. The difference this time is structural: ETF money rebalances by construction, leverage was cleared out in a single day last October, and crypto-margined futures are at all-time lows. Calmer crashes, though, come with a cost — calmer rallies too. And one analyst's warning is worth reading: "The moment the shallow-drawdown story is loudest is usually when downside protection is cheapest." Read more → A message from eCash Bitcoin hasn't shipped a meaningful upgrade since Taproot in 2021. So on October 31, Bitcoin's 18th birthday, it's being hard forked. eCash (ECX) is a Bitcoin hard fork that activates Drivechains (BIP300/301): opt-in sidechains for payments, privacy, and prediction markets. Same ledger, same addresses, same SHA-256 proof of work, plus the upgrade Bitcoin never merged. If a sidechain succeeds, Bitcoin miners earn new fee revenue. If it fails, L1 is unaffected. At the fork block (~973,728), every self-custodied BTC address is credited ECX 1:1, no claim, no sign-up. Your BTC stays on Bitcoin, untouched. Beta is live now, with 7 pools mining and a community already shipping new wallets, explorers, and trackers, unprompted. Holding BTC in your own wallet? You're in. See how the fork works Opinion Crypto is expanding the boundaries of what can be priced Crypto started by creating new assets. Its next phase may be creating new markets around things that already exist — elections, private company valuations, commodity prices — making them continuously tradable for the first time. Altius co-founder Annabelle Huang argues the industry's long-term value proposition is increasingly informational: not "what new asset can we create?" but "what can we price that couldn't be priced before?" 4-minute read → Policy Self-styled 'Godfather' gets 6 years for $37 million Meta fraud scheme Adam Iza, 26, was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for defrauding Meta of $37 million — gaining access to advertising accounts and credit lines, then selling that access to companies that billed clients for ads they never bought. He also hired off-duty LA County sheriff's deputies to intimidate rivals using confidential law-enforcement databases. The sentence runs concurrently with a 15-year term he received last month for an attempted bitcoin robbery. 2-minute read → Know someone who should be reading this? Share this newsletter See all of CoinDesk’s newsletters    CoinDesk, Inc., 61 9th Avenue, 5th Floor, New York,NY,10011,USA, Unsubscribe Manage Preferences   Copyright © 2026 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.