Why Every Bitcoin Optimist Is Secretly Dreading May — And Probably For Good Reason 🤦‍♂️

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What to know:

  • The desperate hope for Bitcoin’s $100,000 glory surges again, as if hope were rationed and May didn’t exist at all. But ah, history — always lurking — deals in bruises and reminders, not prophecies.
  • The apathetic proverb “Sell in May and go away” skulks in the background. May through October: a time when markets yawn, stretch, and fall back asleep — much like my neighbor, who only wakes up for vodka and chess.
  • Bitcoin, like some stubborn prisoner, seems shackled to these old seasonal cycles: volatility parades in, optimism staggers out, and the only constant is the ever-present anxiety of a coming storm.

Bitcoin dances, and everyone fixates on the number: $100,000. The number — like freedom beyond the white-washed prison wall — beckons traders to dream. Euphoria is cheap, but history is expensive, and May, with a sneer, approaches to collect the bill.

“The months ahead,” muses Jeff Mei, COO at BTSE, in his digital cell, “they have not been kind. Many take comfort in the old mantra: Sell in May and Walk Away.” As if walking away is liberation, and the cellphone signal doesn’t follow you to the kitchen. 😏

The market limps, battered in previous months, and yet some whisper this year could defy gravity — as if Bitcoin will soar to $97K, dragging all the broken dreams with it. Weak GDP numbers emerge from America like bad borscht, hinting at recession if the pots stay empty another quarter. Central bankers may drop rates, hoping for a rebound — or perhaps just trying to keep everyone quiet until lunchtime.

This adage, “Sell in May and go away,” has as much permanence in markets as regime slogans in the barracks: nobody likes them, but everyone repeats them out of habit. Once upon a time in London, this phrase meant deserting your post for a horse race in September. Now it’s just an excuse to check out and blame the calendar for your mediocrity.

What data shows

Year after year, the script doesn’t change much. Stocks stumble from May through October, muttering about the good old days. Some investors, like superstitious inmates on the Day of Amnesty, make “Sell in May” their ritual.

Bitcoin, too, shivers beneath the weight of these cycles. Macro tides rise, institutional whales move, retail minnows scatter. Data from CoinGlass reads as if it’s scrawled on a cell wall: May is often a bleak chapter for Bitcoin — in 2021, it lost 35% (the kind of plunge that makes even the vodka taste sour). In 2022, Luna collapsed and so did Bitcoin, down 15%. 2023 tried for cheerfulness but managed only a weak smile.

Occasionally, May has been kind: in 2019 and 2020, Bitcoin flexed muscles grown fat on speculative hope. But these red Mays tend to birth red Junes — four of the last five ended with bruises and regrets. Sometimes the numbers read like the ration schedule: bleak, but never surprising.

Does any of this guarantee future misery? Certainly not — but the market, like an old warden, rarely forgets its habits. Crypto, now crawling with institutions, starts to mirror traditional markets — if your hope was for “revolution,” you must have missed the meeting where they handed out suits and compliance manuals.

Sign of caution?

Traders, sensing the same old chill in the air, prepare themselves. Altcoins, especially those meme-laden playthings, look nervous — hype crashes harder than a guard’s fist at midnight.

Vugar Usi Zade of Bitget slips a message through the digital cracks: “Since 1950, the S&P 500 only manages an average 1.8% May–October, and positive returns just 65% of the time. If that’s victory, I’d hate to see defeat.”

Bitcoin’s Q2 (April–June) has on average brought a 26% bump. But the median — only 7.5% — tells the truth the average tries to hide: occasional feast amid persistent famine. By Q3, returns limp along at 6% and the median slumps below the horizon. Summer is less party, more forced labor camp roll-call.

Q4, of course, is when spirits allegedly soar (+85% on average), and all prisoners are suddenly free. Legend, or maybe simply hope in disguise.

So while crypto pretends it owes nothing to the old world, its foundations still tremble when Wall Street sneezes. “Sell in May” isn’t prophecy — but a story we tell ourselves as the shadows lengthen and the cell doors clang shut. If sentiment breaks, expect panic — but then, wasn’t it always thus?

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2025-05-02 16:31