u/Flowa-Powa

Stripy puppies tidying up under the bird feeders

This formation has developed over 22 days and has a target to the upside of $71,500

I do not believe this is a true trend reversal, the structure is not big enough for that. This is just a retracement wave. Do not get caught in a bull trap.

I still believe we will remain in a bear market for the rest of this year with further and significant downside.

Not because of politics, just because it's funny

And also because of politics...

Inverse Head & Shoulder formation on the hourly Bitcoin chart with a relief rally target of $67,000.

My cycle outlook is still bearish, don't get caught in a bull trap

We have a strong H&S pattern currently printing across the top of the local high on the Bitcoin chart. Neckline to complete the formation is at $76k. Target is $69k.

Lawn used to be weed choked gravel. I decided to roll with it, put down grass seed, and mow regularly. The chewed up bit under the cherry tree is where the badgers come to get their peanuts at night.

The garden does extend into the woodland, and no one cares where the garden ends and the woodland begins. Kids have parties out there in the summer.

After last year's storms it was carnage with lots of trees uprooted and piled up on top of each other. I have a decent chainsaw and we hired a big chipper and it looks better now. Also, the woodshed is full, which is nice

I received the following from Kraken by email, and it is a recommended read. I can't find a link to the whole article, so here it is reproduced verbatim - all credit to u/krakenexchange, please remove if not allowed:

All Eyes Turn to One Level. Could This Be the Week?

May 9th - 14th, 2026

Something feels different about this crypto bear market, and maybe some of you following the space would agree.

Bitcoin's price has been quietly breaking the rules for weeks. The drawdown is shallower than any prior cycle at this stage. ETF flows have run positive for six straight weeks. And as of this week, one of the more reliable on-chain cycle indicators just flipped green for the first time since the start of the last bull run.

The setup is there. The confirmation is not. One thing is still standing in the way: a clean daily close above the 200-day moving average.

Whether this is the week it happens depends on several factors; how the market absorbs a week's worth of inflation data that came in hotter than almost anyone expected, what happens during the CLARITY Act hearing today and how markets react to Warsh's confirmation vote.

Let's get into it.

In a post on May 11, CEO of the Bitcoin Bond Company, Pierre Rochard, shared a chart that puts this bear market in structural context.

His "Bitcoin Drawdowns from ATH to Cycle Low" analysis aligns each historical bear market by the number of days since the all-time high, allowing a direct comparison of how far and how fast BTC has fallen in each cycle. The current reading, as of May 14: Bitcoin sits at approximately $79,640, roughly 37 percent below its cycle peak. At the equivalent point in prior cycles, the 2017-2018 bear market had drawn down approximately 70 percent, the 2013-2015 cycle had lost roughly 80 percent, and the 2021-2022 cycle was more than 50 percent below its high.

Rochard attributes the relative resilience to three factors:

A more muted bull market on the frontend, which left less excess to unwind

Consistent ETF inflows, which have now run for six consecutive week

Corporate treasury accumulation, led by Strategy's 818,000 BTC position

It is worth noting that structural support does not prevent further downside, and the drawdown deepened this week after two consecutive days of hotter-than-expected inflation data pushed BTC below $80,000 for the first time since early May. But the shape of this cycle is different from every prior one at this stage, and that is now visible in the data rather than merely a thesis.

Outside of crypto, equities continued to move higher. The S&P 500 closed at a record 7,444.25 on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq at 26,402.34, both printing new closing highs despite the hottest wholesale inflation reading since early 2022. Gold held near $4,700 amid competing inflation and safe-haven demand. Copper hit a record close of $6.46 on Monday, up more than 13 percent for the year so far.

Wednesday's producer price data compounded the inflation pressure. April PPI rose 1.4 percent for the month, nearly triple the 0.5 percent consensus, with the annual rate hitting 6 percent, its biggest increase since early 2022. Core PPI came in at 1.0 percent against 0.4 percent expectations. Combined with Tuesday's 3.8 percent annual CPI print, the inflation picture heading into Warsh's first FOMC meeting in June looks considerably more complicated than it did a week ago. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.47 percent, its highest level since July 2025, with the 20-year and 30-year both exceeding 5 percent. Traders are now pricing approximately a 30 percent probability of a rate hike by year-end.

Oil was the other notable mover. WTI crude rose 3.94 percent to $99.18 on Monday and Brent climbed 3.49 percent to $104.83 after negotiations between the US and Iran stalled. Iran submitted a 14-point counterproposal, which was described as unacceptable by President Trump in a post on social media. The 48-hour window attached to the earlier framework has now passed without agreement, and discussions appear to be in a more uncertain phase than at any point since the initial de-escalation in early April.

Markets are continuing to assess the situation.

 

Key Opinion Leader

CryptoQuant analysts flagged a development this week that may be significant for those tracking Bitcoin's broader cycle positioning.

The platform's Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator has moved into an "Early Bull" zone, turning green for the first time since March 2023. That earlier transition, as shown in the historical chart, was followed by a confirmed bull market that carried BTC from approximately $20,000 to its eventual all-time high above $126,000.

The analyst behind the post, u/MorenoDV_, is measured in the framing: he describes the signal as an historically important regime-change indicator but explicitly flags the key exception. In March 2022, the same indicator moved into the early bull zone and price was subsequently rejected, leading to a further leg down.

The implication here is clear: the signal is suggestive, not definitive. The difference between confirmation and rejection depends on what follows, not on the signal itself.

That said, for those watching the current setup, this reading adds to the structural case being built by the drawdown data in the above section and the ETF flow momentum discussed in recent editions. Whether it proves to be a 2023-style confirmation or a 2022-style rejection may depend on how BTC responds to the 200-day moving average and how the macro catalysts landing this week play out. The hot inflation data and BTC's drop below $80,000 this week will test whether the signal holds under pressure.

 

Crypto & Macro Calendar

Upcoming Events

May 15: Federal Reserve Chair transition. Jerome Powell's term officially ends, with Kevin Warsh expected to be confirmed as his successor following a full Senate vote this week.

May 20: UK CPI (April 2026). Elevated energy costs from the Strait of Hormuz disruption may have fed through more visibly into this print. The Bank of England's rate path partly depends on this data.

May 21-25: U.S. Congress heads into Memorial Day recess. This is the effective deadline for any CLARITY Act floor vote before the summer break. If the bill does not advance before recess, its chances of passing in 2026 diminish materially.

June 10-11: ECB Governing Council meeting. The ECB's next rate decision arrives against a backdrop of energy-driven inflation and slowing growth across the Eurozone.

 

On-chain Analysis

This week's on-chain focus shifts away from Bitcoin to ChainLink (LINK), where the supply dynamics have become notably interesting.

Santiment Intelligence highlighted that approximately 13.5 million LINK tokens have been moved off exchanges over the past five weeks, a decline representing more than 10.5% of the total exchange-held supply that existed in early April.

Over the same period, LINK's price spiked to $10.48, its highest level since January, and social volume hit a three-month high.

A follow-up post from Santiment noted that ChainLink recorded its two busiest address activity days in eight months on May 9 and May 10, with 282,170 and 264,090 unique addresses active respectively, levels the network has not seen since September 2025. Whale wallets holding between 100,000 and 10 million LINK have added approximately 32.93 million coins over the past 30 days.

The catalyst appears to be structural rather than speculative. On May 7, Solv Protocol announced it would migrate more than $700 million in tokenised Bitcoin assets from LayerZero to ChainLink CCIP following a security review prompted by the April Kelp DAO exploit, with Kelp DAO itself also moving rsETH infrastructure to CCIP. This represents a meaningful shift of institutional-scale DeFi infrastructure toward ChainLink's cross-chain ecosystem.

Combined with the Polymarket oracle partnership from September 2025, which has now powered over $3.4 billion in trading volume, ChainLink's role as critical infrastructure across prediction markets, cross-chain bridging and oracle services is generating the kind of usage-driven demand that did not exist in previous cycles.

Exchange supply declines of this magnitude tend to attract attention from on-chain analysts because tokens leaving exchanges are often interpreted as being moved into longer-term storage, reducing the immediately available supply for selling. When this coincides with rising price and increasing social attention, the combination has historically been associated with sustained moves rather than short-lived spikes, though that association is far from guaranteed and past patterns should not be treated as reliable forecasts of future behavior.

 

Closing thoughts

For weeks now, the question has been whether Bitcoin's resilience above $80,000 is the early stage of something structural or just a prolonged pause before the next leg down. This week, for the first time, the data started to make a case for the former, and then inflation stepped in to complicate it.

The drawdown chart shows a bear market that no longer follows any prior cycle's path. A cycle indicator has turned green for the first time since the beginning of the last bull run. Equities are at all-time highs. ETF flows are running strong. And the policy calendar is delivering real signal, with the CLARITY Act hearing landing today and Warsh's confirmation vote expected soon.

But the inflation data did not cooperate. CPI at 3.8 percent and PPI at 1.4 percent month-on-month pushed BTC below $80,000, and the ceiling scenario we outlined last week is now the one the market is testing. None of the structural signals guarantee the 200-day moving average breaks, and the setup heading into the test has become more complicated than it was at the start of the week.

If the catalysts cooperate from here, this could still be the week that changes the structure. If they don't, $80,000 becomes the ceiling again. Either way, the next few days should tell us a lot.

We'll be back next week with the insights and data that matter most. Until then, trade carefully.

The Kraken Team

As most of you know, Bitcoin operates on a halving cycle that occurs approximately every 4 years. At each halving, the Bitcoin reward granted to miners for mining a new block is cut in half. This affects supply by reducing the amount of new Bitcoin entering the market, and historically this has influenced price.

That said, as block rewards get exponentially smaller, each halving is likely to have less of an effect over time.

I have used Gann boxes to track these cycles and have placed them from ATH to ATH.

A few things jump out immediately. ATH tends to occur approximately 536 days after each halving event. The halving falls nicely on the Fibonacci 0.618, respecting sacred geometry. The bottom of each cycle occurs at 0.25, which on a 4-year timeframe equates to precisely 12 months after each ATH.

So what does this mean for this cycle?

Last year everyone said the cycle was different this time. People say this every cycle. More recently, the argument has been that retail is dead, the action is institutional, and there has been a structural change. In fact, the cycle was not different. ATH fell almost precisely on schedule, 535 days after the preceding halving event.

On-chain analysis suggests a lot of Bitcoin OGs cashed out. The ones who stayed for the long haul are growing older and have made life-changing amounts of profit. A large proportion of them cashed out. Life is finite and is there to be enjoyed. Institutions provided the liquidity, but price action was still significantly affected, with a 50% drawdown.

So what does that mean for us now, in May 2026, 31 weeks after the last ATH?

The track record suggests further drawdown, with a bottom in October this year, 12 months after the 2025 ATH.

Everything suggests this cycle is still not different. A frankly terrifying macro head and shoulders structure across the top of this cycle projects a $35,000 target for October. An ominous bear flag has been developing for the last 100 days. Recently, we broke above the bear flag and reclaimed the neckline on the scary-looking head and shoulders.

But now we are back below the neckline, and back into bear flag territory. As always with Bitcoin, number might go up, might go down, or might go sideways, but I suspect this is a crucial point in the cycle.

My gut feeling is that this cycle is not different and we're headed for a fall.