The Bitcoin Layer

The Bitcoin Layer

Impasse

We’re entering the late stage of the bear market

Johan Bergman's avatar
Johan Bergman
May 27, 2026
∙ Paid

Bitcoin is stuck. Not crashing, not ripping, just grinding sideways while two of the most watched lines in the market, the 200-day moving average and the Short-Term Holder Cost Basis, keep swatting price back down. An impasse.

An impasse is not the same as a standstill. Underneath the boring price action the data tells a more interesting story: implied volatility has gone quiet, on-chain activity has gone quiet, and that particular kind of silence tends to show up in one place, the late stage of a bear market. This week we look at what that silence means, what could break it, and what more than 22,700 SEC filings reveal about institutional bitcoin adoption.


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Nik & Johan are hosting another live TBL Pulse walkthrough this coming Tuesday (June 2nd at 2:00 PM EST).

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During the call, we will send out a one-page memo to all attendees discussing our most important charts from TBL Pulse and how we read their respective signals.

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This session will primarily focus on the bitcoin portion of our TBL Pulse dashboard, where both Nik and Johan will walk us through the latest Valuation & Trend research, which is the underlying framework for the State Quadrant.

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