Is the crypto winter over? Four tests, and they disagree

Noelle Acheson wrote on 4 September, as bitcoin cleared $80,000, that the winter looked close to being over. Bitcoin has added 5.0% since and trades at $84,005. There is no agreed definition of when a crypto winter ends, so the honest way to answer the question is to pick tests that can be measured and report what each one says.

Four tests, four answers

Two of them are about price. Bitcoin bottomed at $58,566 on 1 July and is 43.4% above that level 82 days later, which is a real recovery by any reading. It also sits 33.4% below the $126,080 it reached on 6 October 2025, and that peak is now 350 days old. Both statements describe the same market.

Worth noting is how shallow this one was. Top to bottom, bitcoin lost 53.5%. The 2022 winter took roughly 78% off it and the 2018 winter roughly 84%. Whatever this drawdown was, it was the mildest of the three, which cuts both ways: less damage to repair, and less of the capitulation that marked the end of the previous two.

The four tests, then:

• Off the low: bitcoin is up 43.4% from its 1 July trough. Yes.
• Back to the peak: it is 33.4% below the October 2025 high, 350 days on. No.
• Breadth: 79% of large tokens are up on the week, 21% on the year. Half.
• Money: cumulative ETF inflows are 12.1% below their peak. No.

Breadth is where the answer splits cleanly in two. Among the 92 non-stablecoin tokens in the top 100, 79% are up over the past week, 67% over 30 days and 60% over 200 days. Over a full year only 21% are up, and 52% still trade more than 70% below their own all-time high. The recovery is broad and it is recent. It has not yet undone the year behind it.

“The recent BTC price movement suggests that the crypto winter is close to being over.”

— Noelle Acheson, Author of Crypto Is Macro Now, quoted by Yahoo Finance

Noelle Acheson, author of Crypto Is Macro Now, on 4 September

The money has not come back

The flow data is the least ambiguous and the least encouraging. Cumulative net inflow into the US spot bitcoin ETFs peaked at $62.77bn on 9 October 2025 and stands at $55.16bn, which is 12.1% lower. Last week those funds took in $6.21m on $16.17bn of trading. Prices have risen 43.4% off the low without the ETF money coming back, which means existing holders have been enough so far and new institutional buying has not been the engine.

Against that, the most concrete published call is Bernstein's $150,000 year-end target, which Gautam Chhugani's team has held since calling a bottom earlier this year. From $84,005 that is 78.6% in 101 days, or 0.58% a day, and it lands 19.0% above the all-time high. It is not a recovery target. It is a record target with a deadline, and it deserves to be described that way.

So: the winter is over by the test most people use, which is distance from the bottom, and it is not over by distance from the top, by the year-on-year picture for most assets, or by where the money is. CoinDesk counted six signs of a thaw last week and the signs are real. What would settle it is a week where flows and price move together instead of apart. Which assets you hold through the answer matters more than the label, and our asset guides are where we keep that work.

Informational material, not investment advice. Prices, breadth and capitalisation are CoinGecko data read on 21 September 2026; ETF figures are SoSoValue through 18 September. All of it moves.