Where crypto stands now
Crypto is trading at prices that may look like generational buys. We are 9 to 10 months into this bear market, and it looks clear that Bitcoin is bottoming. Most of the market feels bearish right now. Analysts who stay bullish long-term still expect one final flush to close out the 4-year cycle. Fear, doubt, boredom, and depression are heavy in the space.
This is the depth of the bear market, similar to 2022 or 2018 in crypto.
The long-term view on Bitcoin (BTC)
Michael Saylor, Bitcoin's biggest holder and advocate, was asked whether Bitcoin's heavy underperformance means his whole thesis might be wrong. His answer: "No, I feel pretty comfortable with Bitcoin right now."
His reasoning: MicroStrategy has been buying since August 2020. Pull up the chart from that point and you see five major drawdowns in five years - so a big drop each year is normal. The current drawdown is 50%. The 2021-2022 drawdown was 75%, far worse. Bitcoin hit an all-time high in October, just nine months ago. It could set a new all-time high nine months from now, or it could take a couple of years. Either way, there is reason to stay bullish. He works with a minimum four-year time horizon, usually ten years.
Ethereum (ETH) looks set to reprice
Ethereum is forming what looks like a 5-year launchpad. Every earlier time it coiled up like this, it broke higher. This points to a sharp, violent repricing upward. Ethereum looks undervalued on both price and adoption.
Wall Street and traditional finance (TradFi) are adopting the tech for stablecoins, tokenization, and DeFi. A former BlackRock executive who now runs an Ethereum treasury company explained why he is bullish: he sees his BlackRock and Wall Street peers moving in.
His points on adoption:
- Ethereum is going on offense across stablecoin adoption, tokenized real-world assets, and DeFi. He is spending his time and money to drive institutional adoption.
- The largest institutions are shifting from tokenizing brand-new products to tokenizing existing ones. At BlackRock, launching BUIDL - now the largest tokenized fund in the world - took a couple of years of planning. A year and a half after he left, BlackRock is tokenizing existing money market funds holding $8 billion in assets. That single move is about 30% of all tokenization happening.
- Stablecoins are the money layer. Tokenized real-world assets are the asset-exposure layer, not a new asset class. DeFi and on-chain finance are where execution happens.
- The agentic layer is the automation layer that will bring billions of new users to Ethereum. These users may be AI agents, but they will transact and want decentralized settlement.
Why a big Bitcoin move is coming
Bitcoin volatility is back at all-time lows. This kind of volatility compression tends to resolve in a sudden burst, and history says the move is usually upward. The same setup appeared at the 2025 peak, right before whales held the price at 125K. Low interest and apathy in Bitcoin have always been strong buying moments.
Bitcoin has been chopping in the 60K to 64K range and cannot hold there much longer. The market is in a very low liquidity state per the sell-side risk metric. Six months of "time pain" have now passed following the "price pain" event in February. Sometimes the worst thing for the market is price pain; sometimes it is time pain. Price pain ran from October last year, then the market switched to time pain.
Open interest just hit an 8-month high and has passed the levels seen before the 10-10 crash. Bitcoin is still consolidating around 63,000. Leverage is piling up while price goes nowhere - another sign a big move is building.
The two scenarios
It is very possible Bitcoin falls into the 50s later this year. It is also very possible Bitcoin is bottoming now. Either way, this is the bottoming zone.
Bitcoin demand is quietly recovering after months of deeply negative apparent demand, and the trend is reversing fast. The one signal still missing is a flip back into positive demand - the first real confirmation that buyers have taken control again.
Those buying today, last month, or next month are the ones that next-cycle top buyers will later call lucky.
