PlanB, the pseudonymous analyst behind the stock-to-flow model, says bitcoin’s decline has left markets staring at four likely bear paths, ranging from the classic 80% decline to the possibility that lows are already here.
In a post on
Bitcoin closed January at $78,000, he said, down about 40% from the cycle’s all-time high of $126,000. On his chart, the 200-week moving average ended at $58,000 and the realized price was $55,000, and the January RSI ended at 49, a level he views as a regime change.
“The RSI here is 49. The RSI, as you know, is an index from 0 to 100. And anything above 50 is an uptrend. Anything below 50 is a downtrend,” PlanB said. “So 49 is less than 50, it’s a downtrend. It’s a bear market… similar to 2014-15, 2018-19 and 2022-23.”
4 Bitcoin bear market scenarios
He then outlined four scenarios for the evolution of the payout. The first is the historic “worst case” that still lingers in traders’ mental models: an 80% decline from the top. PlanB said that with an ATH of $126,000, that would mean a move to around $25,000 – “somewhere between those two lines” on his chart, even though he admitted that “it would look really, really weird.”
The second scenario is more conventional based on his own backtesting: a low around the 200-week moving average and a realized price he pegged at $50,000-$60,000. PlanB pointed to previous cycles where the price eventually “dropped.”[s] to moving averages of realized price levels,” pointing to 2022 and 2015 as examples where the RSI low coincided with these long-term anchors.
The third scenario is even shallower: the pullback ends just above the previous cycle’s historical high, around $69,000-$70,000. PlanB’s reasoning is that the previous bull phase was subdued in its indicators, which could reduce the size of the bear market.
“So I think that… because the bull market was very weak… there were no red dots or high RSI highs on it,” he said. “For this reason, the bear market could be very shallow. And that would mean, for example, a return to the level or simply being above the level of… the previous all-time high, which was 69,000.”
The fourth scenario is the one that investors always want on their screens: the market has already printed its low. PlanB wrote that “yesterday’s $72,900 is the low” and reiterated in the video that “maybe the $72,800 we saw a few days ago was already at the low.” It is worth noting that the BTC price already dropped to $70,140 on Wednesday, which invalidates this scenario.
IMO, there are 4 bitcoin bear market scenarios:
1) -80% from PLN 126,000 dollars ATH => 25 thousand dollars
2) up to 200 W MA / realized price => 50-60 thousand. USD
3) down to a level slightly above the previous ATH => 70 thousand. dollars
4) yesterday’s level of 72.9 thousand dollars was the lowestI discuss these scenarios in my up-to-date video:
👉 https://t.co/mXSxJK9LLx— PlanB (@$100 trillion) February 4, 2026
PlanB has re-examined its stock-to-flow framework, saying it remains at $500,000 as a scarcity value signal, while emphasizing that it is not intended to trigger tipping points. “Stock flow says nothing about peaks and troughs,” he said, adding that he was referring to a “four-year average” and a periodic “phase transition every four or five years.”
This caveat formed the basis of his last point: the cycle template can change. PlanB noted that in its four-year cycle approach, historically the peak occurs in the first or second year after the halving, but “this did not occur after the 2024 halving.” In his view, this leaves room for a bullish phase later in the cycle, even though his near-term framework focuses on whether Bitcoin moves towards realized price and 200-week average, maintains its previous ATH zone, or confirms a higher low at $70,000.
At the time of publication, BTC was trading at $
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
