Bitcoin Has Lived This Exact Summer Twice Before. Here Are the Receipts.

By Josh Molnar · August 2026 · 8 min read

Every bear market has a summer like this one, and Bitcoin has now given us three of them. This time I brought the receipts.

Summer 2018

Off the June 2018 low, Bitcoin rallied 48% and the rally set the narrative. By September 13, Michael Novogratz was calling it on CNBC, in a segment titled "Michael Novogratz calls a bottom in cryptocurrencies." His words, with Bitcoin at $6,477: "I think we put in a low yesterday." By October 4, CNBC was running "Wall Street is calling a bottom in bitcoin."

Six weeks later the market crashed. From Novogratz's call, price fell another 51%, and from the summer high 63%, to the real bottom in December at $3,200. The calls were not fringe voices. They were the most platformed names in the asset class, on national television, weeks before the worst leg of the bear.

Summer 2022

The 43% summer rally carried Bitcoin from $17,600 to $25,000 by mid-August. Raoul Pal had declared "we are in a buy zone" in June at $20,000 and was making what he called his biggest addition to his crypto positions since 2020, with Anthony Scaramucci's fund buying more Bitcoin and Ethereum alongside him. Headlines asked if crypto winter was over.

Three months later FTX collapsed, and price fell 39% from the summer peak to the real bottom in November. For the purists, 2014 had a summer trap of its own, but it was twice this size and peaked in June, which is why the clean rhymes for this year are 2018 and 2022.

This bear already ran the play once

On February 2 of this year, on CNBC, Tom Lee said "all the pieces are in place for crypto to be bottoming right now," with Bitcoin at $75,662. His firm made the same call in October 2018. Even that soft version of a bottom call was followed by another 24% of downside over the next five months, straight down to the July low at $57,735.

Summer 2026, live

Bitcoin is up 41% off the July low. On August 7, the analyst Merlijn The Trader posted, in all caps, "THE BITCOIN BOTTOM IS IN." Price targets up to $400,000 are circulating again. And this time it is not one gauge running hot but all of them at once. The daily RSI printed 85.9 on August 21, the first reading above 85 inside a bear market in Bitcoin's history. The Fear and Greed index hit 74, the highest of this entire bear. Funding reached its 90th percentile. All of it with zero closes above $82,833, the bear's last lower high, exactly like both summers before.

The structural tell

Here is the test that separated every trap from every real recovery, and it is not about sentiment at all. Every real recovery in Bitcoin's history broke its downtrend first, and only then got hot. In early 2023, price snapped the bear's sequence of lower highs before the euphoria returned. The summers of 2018 and 2022 inverted that order, running hot inside an unbroken downtrend, and both made new lows. This summer has inverted it again.

The timing adds its own weight. Both prior traps died into fourth-quarter bottoms, 12 to 13 months after their cycle tops. The October 2025 top is 10.7 months behind us, which puts the historical window weeks away, not months.

The verdict

Could this summer be the exception? It is possible, and I argued the strongest version of that case myself this week, in public. But the only two times this exact setup existed, believing it cost people 39% to 63%. So I treat this exactly like the last two summers, not because history must repeat, but because the base rate is 2 for 2 and the structure has not changed.

The line is public. Above $82,833 on a daily and weekly close, the downtrend that has defined this entire bear is finished and we re-evaluate everything, openly. Below $57,735, the trap sprang for the third summer in a row. Until one of those prints, summer number three gets no benefit of the doubt.

The full playbook for how overstretched rallies resolve, in bears and in recoveries, is free: The Pullback Playbook.

Education, not financial advice.

Common questions

What happened after Bitcoin's 2018 summer rally?

The 48% rally off the June 2018 low convinced much of Wall Street the bottom was in. Michael Novogratz said on CNBC on September 13, 2018, "I think we put in a low yesterday," with Bitcoin at $6,477, and CNBC ran "Wall Street is calling a bottom in bitcoin" in early October. Six weeks later Bitcoin crashed, falling 51% below Novogratz's call and 63% below the summer high to the December bottom near $3,200.

What happened after Bitcoin's 2022 summer rally?

Bitcoin rallied 43% from about $17,600 in June to $25,000 by mid-August 2022. Raoul Pal had declared a buy zone and was adding aggressively, and headlines asked if crypto winter was over. Three months later FTX collapsed and price fell 39% from the summer peak to the real bottom in November 2022.

Is the 2026 summer rally the same as 2018 and 2022?

The rhyme is close on every measurable axis so far: a 41% rally off the July low against 48% and 43% in the prior cases, August timing, famous names publicly calling the bottom, and hot readings inside an unbroken downtrend with zero closes above the last lower high at $82,833. What is genuinely different is intensity: the daily RSI print of 85.9 is the first above 85 inside a bear market in Bitcoin's history. Whether that makes it the third trap or the first exception is exactly what the two price lines will decide.

What would prove the summer 2026 rally is not a trap?

The structural test. Every real recovery broke its downtrend before running hot. A daily and weekly close above $82,833, the bear's last lower high, would end the pattern this entire bear has followed and force a public re-evaluation. A close below the July low of $57,735 would confirm the third summer trap in a row.

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