This Is What $1,000 Invested in Bitcoin During Its Last Bear Market Is Worth Today

When Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) was priced near $16,600 on Jan. 1, 2023, the prevailing mood in crypto was funeral-grade despair; the coin was down by around 77% from its prior high. You could hardly say publicly that you were thinking about buying it without getting scoffed at. It turned out to be one of the best entry points in the asset's history.

The coin is in a bear phase once again, with its price down by about 43% from its all-time high set in October 2025. So exactly how well did those who bought it during the last bear market do, and is history likely to rhyme here?

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Is it the same bear?

First, let's get some clarity on the current market conditions. The ongoing Bitcoin decline is certainly quite painful, but it looks somewhat similar to 2022 structurally.

That bear market was triggered by a cascading series of crypto industry failures, like the collapse of fraudulent exchanges and stablecoins losing their peg to their underlying fiat currency. It looked like popularly posited market drivers, like Bitcoin cycle theory, had fully played out, leaving a vacuum with few positive catalysts in sight. And the Federal Reserve's rate-hiking campaign, intended to control inflation starting in 2022, certainly made the entire situation much harder to recover from, as higher rates make risk assets like crypto far less desirable.

This time around, it was the Oct. 10, 2025, flash crash that ushered in the bear market, which also happened to coincide with the period when popular frameworks for modeling Bitcoin's price based on its mining reward indicated that a breakdown was likely.

More recently, the war with Iran and disruptions to the oil supply flowing through the Strait of Hormuz have soured risk appetite broadly. The Federal Reserve's rate-cutting cycle has stalled, and inflation may be returning, which would put rate hikes back on the table. And Bitcoin is selling off because the macro environment is punishing risk assets in general.

There's a big opportunity here, if you have the nerve for it

Last time around, pushing your discomfort to the side and buying Bitcoin anyway would have paid off big. A $1,000 investment in early January 2023, at the depths of the prior bear market, would be worth approximately $4,330 today. That's a 333% gain in a little over three years.

The challenge is that it's going to be very easy to talk yourself out of buying Bitcoin right now, just like it was during the last bear market. The price chart simply looks awful.

But recall that in 2023, you didn't need to nail the exact bottom of the market to do spectacularly well.

Buying anywhere in the vicinity of the trough was enormously profitable, and the same principle applies now. History is no guarantee of what happens in the future, but I'm optimistic about Bitcoin. If you're brave enough, I suggest setting up dollar-cost averaging and buying the same small amount of Bitcoin every week regardless of where its price is. The last time there was such a juicy opportunity for doing this, it only took a couple of years to see some great results, and that's what I'm banking on happening this time, too.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.