What does it feel like to live in fear for 29 consecutive days?

Since that turning point on October 11, the market has felt like a pressure cooker. Over the past month, the Fear & Greed Index has stayed in the “Fear” and “Extreme Fear” range for 29 days. Looking back at historical data, this kind of sustained emotional low pressure is extremely rare.

But from another perspective—what is this prolonged fear really brewing?

The main players are actually doing something very simple: wearing down retail investors' psychological defenses. They wear you down to the point where even a small rebound looks like a bull trap, to the point where you start doubting whether a bull market will ever come again. Panic itself isn’t the endgame; rather, it’s like a period of rapid reshuffling of holdings. Compared to the last two 30%+ corrections in Bitcoin, this shakeout has lasted longer and has been more emotionally extreme—which, by normal logic, means the energy released afterward could be even more intense.

And just as the market grows numb, policy makers have quietly shifted gears.

A major central bank has already ended balance sheet reduction #ETH走势分析 QT(, and officials have recently sent very clear signals: balance sheet expansion is not far off. Some institutions estimate that as soon as next week’s rate meeting, they may initiate Reserve Management Purchases )RMP(, absorbing roughly $20 billion in short-term Treasuries per month. The key move was actually made at the beginning of December—that round of capital injection was the largest since the 2020 pandemic.

Once something like this starts, it basically doesn’t stop midway. It’s like the cycle of rate hikes and cuts back in the day—once it starts, it has inertia. The signal for a liquidity shift is already flashing; it’s just that a lot of people are still staring blankly at the fear index.