The 2018 and 2022 bear markets looked nothing alike on the surface. But they destroyed people in the exact same way.

Not through the crash itself as everyone expects the crash, but it's the 6 - 12 months of pain AFTER the crash that wipes people out, and almost nobody talks about this part.
Here's what actually happens: Bitcoin dropped 70 - 80%, everyone panics and then it bounces. And this is where it gets dangerous... because that bounce feels like 'the bottom'.
In 2018, BTC hit ~$6k in February and bounced. People called the bottom for MONTHS: 'accumulation zone', 'smart money loading', but the real bottom didn't come until December at ~$3.1k. That's 9 months of false hope!
2022? Same script. BTC hit $17.5k in June after Luna collapsed. It bounced around for months, people were calling the bottom again. Then FTX happened in November and we swept below $15.5k.
Both times, the pattern was identical: the market crashes fast, then goes sideways for SO long that people either: buy the first bounce thinking they're a genius or get bored and stop paying attention entirely and slowly bleed out their capital averaging into positions way too early.
The actual bottom doesn't feel like a bottom. It feels like nobody cares about crypto anymore. Your timeline goes quiet. The 'experts' stop posting. Your group chats go dead.
And that's the signal most people refuse to accept: the bottom isn't a price level, it's an emotional state across the entire market and it takes way longer to arrive than anyone wants to believe.
If you're sitting in a market right now waiting for a "dip to buy," ask yourself honestly: are you prepared to be wrong for 6-9 months? Because that's what bottoming actually looks like. It's not a V-shape recovery, it's months of nothing, boredom and second guessing absolutely everything.
The people who made life changing money in both cycles weren't the ones who called the bottom. They were the ones who had capital left when it finally arrived.