Crypto market correction: What it means and how to prepare

As we’re nearing the end of the first quarter of 2025, US president Donald Trump’s administration has been in charge of the world’s largest economy for only about two months. But in this short period of time, the 47th POTUS has already been making an outsized impact on financial and crypto markets — as the threat of tariffs with many of America’s trading partners, government sector layoffs and a new paradigm in the relationship between the US and European economies have sent investor sentiment into the territory of fear. Both stock market sentiment indices and the major Bitcoin Fear & Greed indices are hovering between the orange and red zones of fear.

As of the time of this writing on Mar 17, 2025, the stock market’s primary gauge — the S&P 500 index — has declined by around 8% since its recent peak on Feb 19, 2025, while Bitcoin (BTC) is down by 23% since its all-time high on Jan 20, 2025, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration.

As the crypto market declines, investors are becoming more unsettled, wondering if this drop represents another blip on the typically mercurial radar of Bitcoin or a prelude to a steeper downturn. Is this the market correcting itself after recent (possibly overly) optimistic gains, or are we witnessing the start of something scarier? In this atmosphere, it's important to distinguish between a market correction and a more profound decline known as a bear market. In this article, we cover what a crypto market correction is, how it differs from a bear market and — more importantly — how you can prepare for it as a cryptocurrency investor.

Key Takeaways:

• In the traditional stock market, a market correction is a decline between 10% and 20% in asset prices. In contrast, a market crash occurs when prices drop by more than 20%.

• The crypto market experiences corrections and crashes significantly more often than the stock market, but also characteristically recovers from these downturns.

• Valuable strategies to prepare for a market correction involve removing exposure, utilizing stop-loss orders, automating your trades and employing investment methods such as dollar-cost averaging (DCA).

What is a crypto market correction?

A correction is a market decline that typically ranges from 10% to 20%. It signifies a relatively small but still noticeable drop in asset prices. The crypto market undergoes more frequent corrections than the stock market, due to its inherently volatile nature. Over the past year alone (to mid-March 2025), Bitcoin’s price has experienced at least six corrections. In comparison, the stock market's primary index — the S&P 500 — hasn't experienced a correction within the past year. However, it's quickly approaching just that, with prevalently negative investor sentiment a 9% decline from recent peaks.

Is a market correction the start of a bear market?

A market correction — especially if it leads to a rapid decrease in asset prices — might seem worrying at first, but it’s part of the market's natural rhythm. In most cases, corrections end with a market rebound, i.e., a bull market, as asset price drops lead to increased interest to buy the dip. However, if a correction is caused by significant underlying issues — such as price bubbles that have built up over long periods, or wider economic declines — it can be a precursor to a bear market, which is characterized by a significant drop of over 20% in the market as asset prices decrease.

Some sources refer to bear markets and market crashes interchangeably. However, others distinguish between the two concepts. According to some definitions, a market crash is a significant but short-lived decline of over 20%, while a bear market is a prolonged period of depressed asset prices that may last for months, or even years.

Crypto market correction vs. bear market

It's important to distinguish between a crypto market correction and a bear market, as the two require different strategies and approaches. Market corrections generally don't require the type of drastic measures from investors that bear markets do. As we’ve noted above, some analysts refer only to prolonged crashes as bear markets, while others use the terms “crash” and “bear market” interchangeably. If we assume the latter definition, then any market crash of over 20% — whether short- or long-term — can be described as a bear market.

Note that the definitions of a correction (10% to 20% decline) and bear market (over 20% decline) originated in traditional finance. These definitions have been used for the crypto market as well, but due to its higher volatility, the crypto market experiences corrections and bear markets considerably more often than the stock market does.

We noted earlier that the last time the stock market experienced a correction — as measured by the S&P 500 — was between July and October 2023, around one and a half years ago. Even then, the decline in the index was contained to 10%, just meeting the definition of a correction. In contrast, the crypto market has experienced numerous corrections (and three crashes) over the past year alone, to Mar 17, 2025. The image below shows these three crashes, which resulted in the decline of the market’s total capitalization by around 22–23% each time. Additionally, we’ve annotated the ongoing correction that started to develop on Mar 2, 2025 — just days after the market rebounded from its last crash. This correction has so far (in ten days) resulted in a 12% decline in the total market cap.

Source: Adapted from TradingView.com with added annotations

Evidently, the crypto market is much more accustomed to corrections and bear markets than the stock market is.

How to prepare for a crypto market correction

Crypto corrections often arrive after periods of overly optimistic buying. They may also be caused by negative sentiment when crypto gets hammered — once again — by another influential regulatory authority. Investor sentiment may also turn negative and lead to a correction when traditional markets are trending downward. The last scenario is what we’re witnessing right now — the new Trump administration’s penchant for tariffs and drastic changes to budgetary spending has sent stocks downward, and the cryptocurrency market has duly followed suit.

When a correction is on the horizon, what can you do to best protect yourself? Below, we list several strategies that can limit the impact of a crypto correction on your investments.

Remove exposure

Consider reducing your long positions when you sense early signals of a market decline. Some technical analysis indicators, such as bearish candlestick formations or oscillators turning downward, can help you identify a market peak and an imminent downtrend.

Set a stop-loss

A stop-loss order is a preset instruction to sell an asset once its price drops to a specific level. It’s one of the best trading strategies to limit potential losses during a market slump. Stop-loss orders have two primary benefits. First, they free you from the necessity to monitor prices and continually close your positions manually. Secondly, and importantly, these orders help avoid emotional decision-making during volatile downturns.

Automate trades

Placing stop-loss orders is just the tip of the iceberg when automating your trades. You can also devise considerably more sophisticated automated trading strategies by using trading bots. Bybit offers a variety of these bots to help you set key parameters for your trading strategy and execute it in a fully automated fashion.

For instance, the Bybit Futures Grid Bot lets you automate your grid trading — a strategy whereby a set of orders is placed at several points above and below a certain reference price for an asset. The price points above the current asset price are designated as sell orders, while those below the current price are reserved to trigger buy orders. The corresponding sell or buy order is executed when the asset's price reaches a pre-specified point in the grid.

Another useful trading bot for your correction arsenal is the Bybit DCA Bot, which allows you to fully automate dollar-cost averaging (DCA) trades.

Dollar-cost averaging

DCA is one of the most valuable trading strategies when expecting a correction or finding yourself in the midst of one. It involves splitting your total planned investment amount into equal chunks that are invested at predetermined time intervals, e.g., monthly, fortnightly, weekly or even daily. You make your regular fixed investments regardless of how the market moves.

As with automated trading strategies, DCA helps remove the emotional aspect from your investing. When you anticipate a market downturn, emotional factors can easily creep into your decision-making. DCA is one key way to prevent your emotions from affecting your trades.

DCA also reduces the impact of market volatility, since you’re spreading your purchases over time instead of buying at a single price point.

The Bybit DCA Bot we mentioned above isn’t the only way to automate your DCA strategy — there’s also the Bybit Auto-Invest product, which lets you set up your regular DCA investments in a few easy steps.

What if the market continues to crash?

In the event that a correction continues to develop into a crash, the most crucial step is to avoid being influenced by emotions. If you find yourself amid a market crash, remember that all crashes, just like all corrections, are followed by market rebounds. The bottom of the market isn’t going to fall off — profit-seekers, both retail and institutional investors, will sooner or later move in to buy the dip. In fact, this could be an excellent opportunity for you to acquire assets with strong fundamentals, and at bargain prices.

Thus, stay calm, plan for the long term when prices inevitably recover, stick to strategies that eliminate emotional trading — such as automated methods and DCA — and perhaps even consider buying high-potential assets while they remain undervalued during the crash.

The bottom line

The concept of market corrections sounds unnerving. But unlike protracted bear markets, they’re typically short-lived and followed by price increases. The key steps to take in a correction are to avoid emotional decision-making, reduce exposure as much as possible, place some stop-loss orders and employ strategies like DCA and automated grid trading.

Notably, while stock market investors aren't accustomed to frequent corrections and crashes, the crypto market experiences them every year, multiple times. And yet, the multiyear, long-term established trend of the market has remained upward ever since the word “cryptocurrency” entered the financial vernacular. A stock market investor might feel intimidated by a correction — and even feel like fainting at the thought of a crash — but a savvy crypto investor knows that corrections and crashes are business as usual. As such, be prepared, but don’t panic. We’ve been through crypto market crashes more often than Bitcoin has been declared dead.

#LearnWithBybit