Bitcoin Is Flashing All the Signs That It May Have Finally Bottomed. Is It Time to Buy Bitcoin Again?

With Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) rallying aggressively and rising above $78,000 on Aug. 24, the coin may well be finally exiting its bear market, which started in October 2025. Earlier in August, the asset manager VanEck published a report arguing that a majority of the indicators it tracks to identify the coin's cyclical lows had fired, suggesting that a new bull phase may be on the way relatively soon.

So does this mean that it's time to buy Bitcoin again, assuming investors weren't accumulating it through the decline?

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The data looks optimistic

VanEck's model for Bitcoin features 12 metrics that tend to reach their most extreme readings when a sell-off or bear market is approaching its end. Eight of those metrics were flagging extremes as of mid-August, and all of them had done so within the prior three months.

One important factor VanEck cited is the duration of Bitcoin's bear phase, which has lasted 10 months so far. On average, such downtrends last 11 months.

Another key dimension is miner discouragement. When miners are underwater on their hardware investments and the coin's price is too low to make further mining profitable, they exit the industry. Difficulty then retargets downward automatically to keep block times near 10 minutes, which raises margins for the miners still running. VanEck's observation, which is supported by on-chain data, is that difficulty is down 18% from its November 2025 peak, the steepest drop since 2021, so less profitable miners have likely already been washed out.

There is also a data point that looks alarming at first glance, but that is consistent with what VanEck describes as a more moderated Bitcoin whose behavior has shifted alongside increasing institutionalization. Whereas past bear markets saw Bitcoin's price decline by roughly 80% relative to the high, this one bottomed 54% below the peak on June 30, and the coin is just 37% below its record as of Aug. 24.

Keep accumulating this asset

The smartest move available to investors was to buy Bitcoin during the period when it was cheaper than it is right now. The next smartest move is to start buying it again now, before its next bull market is undeniably underway.

Could its price drop precipitously and set a new low for this bear market? It absolutely could, but that would be quite surprising given the factors we've discussed, as well as the many others that VanEck identified in its report. Even then, over the long term, the supply of the coin would keep becoming harder and harder to produce, which would bias its price to the upside, assuming there was still some baseline level of demand.

This is not a reason to bet the farm on Bitcoin today, or to allocate more than 5% of your portfolio to it. Buy in small chunks on a regular interval and hold it for as many years as you can, and its short-term price action will simply not matter as much to your portfolio.

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