Bull and bear marketBull market and bear market: what do these terms mean?

If you follow crypto prices, these two words are hard to avoid. But what exactly do bull market and bear market mean, and why these two animals as symbols? The terms are used across all financial markets: shares, property and crypto. They describe the direction prices move in over a longer period.

• Bull market: prices rise for a long time. The mood among investors is optimistic.
• Bear market: prices fall for a long time. The mood among investors is pessimistic.

A bull or bear market can arise from various causes: changes in supply and demand, the general economic climate, regulation and, not least, the psychology of the market itself. Are prices rising sharply? That attracts new buyers, which reinforces the rise. Are they falling? People drop out, and the decline gets steeper.

A bull market is a period in which prices rise for a long time. The image of the bull comes from the way a bull attacks its opponent: it throws its horns upwards. Just like prices during a bull market.

During a bull market investors are optimistic. Anyone who says they're "bullish" trusts that prices will go up. A long period of rising prices is what we call a bull run.

On Wall Street stands the famous bull statue, a symbol of confidence and hope for rising prices.

The crypto market has now been through several bull markets. A few notable ones:

• 2017: bitcoin rose in a single year from around €1,000 to over €16,000. ICOs sprang up like mushrooms, and #WhenLambo became a hashtag.
• 2020-2021: a second big rise, driven by institutional interest (companies such as Tesla and MicroStrategy bought bitcoin) and the coronavirus crisis.
• 2024-2025: bitcoin reached new all-time highs after bitcoin spot ETFs were approved in the US.

During these periods there was what investors call FOMO, Fear Of Missing Out. Everyone wants to get in because they don't want to miss the next rally.

A bear market is the opposite: a period in which prices fall for a long time. Many financial sources use a drop of 20% or more from the peak as the threshold.

And the image of the bear? It swipes downwards with its claws, just like falling prices. There's also a second origin story from the 18th century: a bearskin jobber sold bear skins before he had received them, hoping the cost price would fall in the meantime. Bearskin was shortened to bear.

During a bear market investors are pessimistic. Anyone who is bearish expects prices to keep falling. At the Frankfurt stock exchange there's a statue of a bull and a bear, a symbol of the eternal fight between optimists and pessimists.

For crypto there's no exact definition of "long enough". But as rough rules of thumb:

• Bull market: months to years of mostly rising prices.
• Bear market: the same time span, but falling, often starting from a price peak.

Important: a short decline is not a bear market, and a short rise is not a bull market. The general trend over a longer period is what counts. The crypto market alternates cyclically between the two phases: roughly every four years we see a comparable pattern, often tied to the bitcoin halving.

If you look at the very long term (10+ years), bitcoin is up substantially on balance. But we don't have a crystal ball either, nobody can tell you what happens tomorrow.