Bitcoin’s sitting around $64,000, down almost 50% from its cycle peak. That’s a shallower drop than past cycles, but also a lower high — the 2025 rally topped at about $126,000 before the downtrend set in.
Where it goes from here? Analysts can’t agree.
Standard Chartered thinks the bottom might already be in. They point to structural demand from ETFs, corporate treasuries, and improving long-term capital flows. On the other end, Hilbert Capital’s Russell Thomson sees more pain ahead — a revisit to $52K or even $40K-45K, with a potential low around October 2026. He says Bitcoin’s behaving like a high-beta macro instrument now, not a detached crypto asset.
Bitwise’s Andre Dragosch lands somewhere in the middle. He calls it a “late-stage bear market” — exhaustion signals are visible, sentiment is as bad as post-FTX 2022. But he won’t say the bottom’s confirmed. No single indicator can reliably call it, he argues.
Galaxy Research’s base case points to $40K-$46K as a possible floor. Citi just slashed its 12-month target from $112K to $82K, citing Bitcoin’s growing correlation with risk assets.
Dean Chen at Bitunix Exchange thinks the whole framing is off. “The wrong question is ‘when will Bitcoin bottom?'” he says. “The more important question is: ‘when will crypto once again become the most attractive destination for global risk capital?'” He points out that Bitcoin’s now competing directly with AI infrastructure and equities for marginal liquidity. Derivatives markets drive more of the price action than in past cycles.
One thing most agree on: this cycle doesn’t look like the old ones. ETFs, institutional flows, and macro liquidity have changed the game. A sharp V-shaped recovery might not happen. We could be looking at a long, slow base-building phase instead.
