Recently, Bitcoin's performance has indeed been frustrating. Repeatedly bouncing between $87,300 and $91,500, many people have started to doubt whether a decline is truly imminent. But this situation is actually a common pattern before a bull market—it's a shakeout.

How to recognize a shakeout? It's simple. The big players will deliberately create large fluctuations, suppress key support levels, and force retail investors to sell at a loss. During this time, the candlestick patterns usually show triangular consolidations or flag formations, with decreasing trading volume and alternating bullish and bearish candles. Bitcoin is currently doing just that—testing the $87,300 key level multiple times, with buying interest quickly stepping in to form higher lows, but once it rebounds near $91,500, it gets pushed down again. This "ceiling above and floor below" pattern is a classic sign of a shakeout.

Even more interesting are the sentiment data. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index has fallen to 15, and social media is filled with calls that the bull market is over, with even some long-term holders beginning to waver and consider exiting. This sounds like a big drop is coming, but on-chain data tells a different story—addresses holding Bitcoin for over a year are still near all-time highs, and whales are quietly accumulating below $90,000. From a behavioral finance perspective, when retail investors are generally giving up, it’s actually a sign that selling pressure is starting to exhaust.

Looking back at history, each time there was a highly pessimistic low after a correction from a high in 2025, it corresponded to a bottom phase. The depth and duration of this shakeout are more exaggerated than before, indicating that a larger rebound may be brewing.

The tricks that big players use are nothing more than a few types. For example, "opening high and then selling off"—a gap up at the open followed by a sharp drop, causing massive stop-loss orders to trigger; or "using technical levels to shake out"—deliberately breaking support lines to trigger automated sell-offs. However, these tactics have a flaw—when prices hit new lows, trading volume often shrinks, which is called price-volume divergence. This usually hints that buyers are quietly accumulating at the bottom. When retail panic selling dries up, the market will naturally reverse.