Longtime trader Peter Brand, who many consider to be legend, offers a new perspective on the way of thinking about market crashes, drawing unexpected comparisons between the wild fluctuations of Bitcoin (BTC) and one of the most famous recessions in the history of the US stock market.
According to Brandt, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) crash fall in the early 1930s is often pointed out as the ultimate example of the bear market, but it may not be as unique as many people imagine.
At the time, during Great Fear Presion, the Dow fell more than 80% from its high. This has become a benchmark for what a “real” crash looks like. But Brandt questioned whether it still makes sense to treat that decline as a gold standard.
He pointed out that Bitcoin has actually experienced four similar declines since 2011.
In the early 1930s, the US stock market plummeted over 80%, but it is still being postponed as the gold standard for the bare market 🥱🥱🥱🥱🥱$ DJIA
There is a white knuckle group of traders and is a crypto maniac. $BTC has experienced four similar declines since 2011 pic.twitter.com/xzhsy0jjim-Peter Brandt (@peterlbrandt) May 13, 2025
While experts often view Bitcoin as an unpredictable and risky investment, Brandt’s view places these crashes in a more accessible context. Rather than think of Bitcoin’s volatility as completely new and confusing, he says it follows a similar pattern to what has been seen before, just in a different time and market.
References from Chart Brandt show the dramatic rise and fall of the Dow from 1928 to 1933, with the head and shoulders becoming transparent before a large drop, eventually bottoming around 40.56. The recovery took the markets years, but the recovery looked like Bitcoin after each major recession.
When Brandt brings this comparison, he is not saying that BTC is exactly the same as the Dow. He says that extreme drawdowns do not automatically mean that assets are bad investments. They could actually be part of the process, especially in new or fast-evolving markets.
