From Yesterday's Simply Bitcoin Live | Episode 1598
The Numbers
Price cooled as the dollar index spiked to 101, the exact dynamic Cole's own thesis expects to eventually reverse.
The News
Matt Cole, CEO of Bitcoin treasury company Strive, told the Charles Schwab Network the crypto winter is over and the bottom is in. His base case: Bitcoin hits $400,000 to $500,000 by 2030, a 30 to 70 percent annualized return.
His math starts with the dollar, not Bitcoin. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is buying back roughly $6 billion of Treasuries per auction, backed by nearly $1 trillion sitting in the Treasury General Account. Cole reads that as the Treasury choosing to hold down long-term rates instead of letting them rise, which pushes the pressure onto the dollar. A weaker dollar has historically been one of the most reliable predictors of a Bitcoin bull market.
The bulls used to have to defend their price targets. Now they have to defend being too modest.
Ki Young Ju, CryptoQuant's founder, is predicting this cycle delivers a 3x to 5x return rather than another 10x parabolic run, followed by a milder bear market instead of the 80 percent crashes Bitcoin used to produce.
His reasoning: a bigger market cap and heavier institutional ownership dampen both extremes. This cycle, Bitcoin's MVRV ratio never dropped below 1, meaning holders as a whole never went underwater, even at the recent lows.
Giving up the 10x also means giving up the crash that comes with it. Not every Bitcoiner is thrilled about that trade.
Bitcoin ETF flows are positive for the year again, according to Bloomberg's Eric Balchunis, after $4.6 billion flowed back in over the past month. BlackRock's IBIT alone pulled in just over $1 billion across the last four trading days, per Arkham, more than any other Bitcoin fund.
Institutions are now absorbing roughly 200 percent of the Bitcoin miners produce every day, according to Capriole Investments. That means ETFs alone are buying more supply than exists, while Bitcoin is up 33 percent over the past 30 days.
Whoever is behind those ETF wrappers, retail, hedge funds, or sovereign wealth funds, they are not selling.
The Culture
Market CommentaryOn Kalshi's prediction markets, traders are pricing single digit odds on Bitcoin closing 2026 above $100,000, with the bulk of the money clustered around the $100,000 to $105,000 band.
That is a strange number considering Bitcoin already touched $126,000 earlier this cycle and sits near $84,000 today, roughly 19 percent away from triple digits again. The market built to price the future is betting against a level Bitcoin has already cleared once.
Where people put real money down usually says more than what they post online, and right now the crowd is betting against its own recent history.
The full episode breaks down how a Treasury auction feeds a $500,000 Bitcoin case, plus the onchain read on why 80 percent crashes might be a thing of the past.
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