Understanding the Bear Season: A guide for all Crypto traders in Nigeria
By: Damian Okonkwo What is the bear season? The crypto bear season is the time when the prices of various Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin and altcoins drop massively due to tight monetary policies such as interest rate hikes which causes investors to withdraw from risky assets and invest in government bonds and other less risky assets with fixed returns, especially the strong currencies. Major causes of the crypto bear season A. Tight monetary policies: This refers to the central banks policies of reducing the amount of money in circulation through aggressive interest rate hikes. Hiking the interest rate often pushed investors to withdraw from risky assets and to divert into bonds and other strong currencies with the highest interest rate for instance the US dollar. This affects the crypto market negatively. For instance, the strong bear season witnessed since the beginning of 2022 has been largely caused by the aggressive interest rate hike by the Fed and other countries central banks in the quest to curb the rising inflations. B. Tapering: This is the strategy used by the Central Banks to reduce the amount of money in circulation by reducing its balance sheets and slowing down its purchase of treasuries and other mortgage-backed securities. Often