Alt Season, Bull & Bear Market, Whale, Dolphin, Shark… Explained

Welcome to another Crypto Jargon post. These are my free series of articles where I break down the complex crypto terminology, acronyms and trading slang.

Today’s terms are: Alt Season, Bull Market and Bear Market, and a few fish-related slang such as Whale and Dolphin.

Let’s start with Alt Season.
This is a trading slang referring to a period of time when many of the altcoins experience significant gains in value. We’re talking 100%-200% and even more, which is not unusual for many of the alt coins.

This usually occurs at times of relative stability in Bitcoin prices and overall increased confidence in the altcoin markets.
Alt seasons are usually short-lived, because once Bitcoin starts a bull-run or a bear trend,
altcoins tend to drop significantly.

Talking of Bull Run or also known as Bull Market. This is another trading term referring to a period when market prices significantly rise, most recently we experience this in the wake of the third Bitcoin halving event which is happening as I’m writing this.

Prices would fluctuate of course, but the overall trend is up and despite the drops in the short-term (smaller time-frames i.e. hours or days), the general direction keeps being upward.

Bulls are the traders who have a positive sentiment about price increase, in other words, the buyers. The association with a bull comes from the upward movement a bull makes when it attacks.

The opposite trend (downward) is known as a Bear trend or Bear market.
It’s what we experienced throughout 2018 when prices were in constant and significant decline.
There is no fixed time-frame for a trend to form. A drop of more than 30% is usually considered a sign of a Bear Market and it can take months or even years to fully develop.
Bears respectively, are those traders who speculate (or predict) falling prices, in other words, the sellers. The association with a bear comes from the falling movement bears make when they attack.

Another popular animal analogy used in trading slang is a “Whale“. These are investors or traders who operate with huge amounts (whether their own or company-run accounts) who can move the prices of an asset by placing very large orders which then trigger a ripple effect as other traders follow the direction of these orders.
Whales can cause a bull-run by placing large buy-orders in a short space of time, driving prices upwards or the opposite, a bear-run / bear trend which can happen even faster, as there’s always a lot of panic-selling involved when people see falling prices and the ripple effect catches on much sooner.
The association with a whale comes from the way these giants of the sea displace huge volumes of water as they swim in the ocean.

Other sea-creatures borrowed in the trading slang are “Dolphins” – these are also traders with large accounts but not as big as the whales, while the majority of other traders are simply known as “fish“.

This is everything for today’s article, I hope it was informative, leave a comment if you have any further questions or suggestions.

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