Winter in the Market: A Turgenev-tinged Irony

On a gray Saturday the market wore the air of a provincial salon where rumors travel faster than the truth. Bitcoin, that restive colt of finance, slid south with a violence that would shame a storm, settling at a seven-month low just over seventy-five thousand dollars. In less than two weeks it had shed twenty thousand, as if a careless gust had plucked a portion of the house from its foundations.

January closed with a ten percent decline, the fourth consecutive month in the red-an occurrence that would trouble even the most stoic of our bear-scarred neighbors.

Now, though, the sages of the street rush to offer their counsel, and Merlijn The Trader, with a name that sounds like a tavern sign, discovers a silver lining in the multi-billion-dollar wipeout that befell the market on Saturday.

Every major Bitcoin rally begins in the same manner,

Brutal flush.

Broken confidence.

Quiet accumulation.

That is when prudent money makes its entrance.

Pain forges the launchpad.

Bitcoin, alas, is following the familiar script once again.

– Merlijn The Trader (@MerlijnTrader) January 31, 2026

He points to Bitcoin’s temperament, a creature of extraordinary volatility, unlike the steadier beasts of ordinary asset classes. Each rally, he reminds us, begins with the same rude wakefulness-a brutal flush, then the shivers of broken confidence, followed by a quiet, almost embarrassed accumulation.

The flush arrived again yesterday, as BTC tumbled and dragged the rest of the market into its whirlpool. Confidence, that gentleman’s virtue, seems broken-evident in the Fear and Greed Index, which now bears the label extreme fear. Yet whispers persist that whales have begun to reaccumulate the asset.

He adds that “pain builds the launchpad,” and notes that BTC is now treading the same melodramatic road. In a separate post, he designates the significance of the $78,000 threshold, which could determine the next short-term tremor-a “healthy correction,” or a deeper swoop toward the recent nadir.

BITCOIN HAS ONE LEVEL THAT MATTERS RIGHT NOW:

$78,000

This is the boundary between

– Healthy correction

– A deeper sweep toward $76K

No sentiment.

No grand narratives.

Just price action deciding the next move.

– Merlijn The Trader (@MerlijnTrader) January 31, 2026

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2026-02-01 12:12