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Bitcoin Bull Run Hasn’t Died—It’s Evolving, Says Galaxy Research Head

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Bitcoin’s grinding tape, tamed volatility and repeated, incremental all-time highs aren’t signs of a failed cycle however proof of a market altering arms and altering character, in accordance with Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of firmwide analysis in an interview launched October 23.

Bitcoin Bull Run Gone Quiet: Here’s Why

The researcher argues that the driving force capping bitcoin’s near-term upside is exogenous—US–China tariff risk—fairly than any structural deterioration within the asset’s fundamentals or adoption. “I don’t but suppose it’s extra existential than that for the bull market,” he stated, describing the present value motion as “form of crab,” with the market “nonetheless” climbing a wall of fear.

The value dialogue hinged on two linked observations. First, bitcoin isn’t buying and selling like gold but as a result of “markets transfer on the margins,” and marginal flows nonetheless deal with BTC as threat. Second, these margins are shifting, with passive, long-term allocators steadily absorbing distribution from older cohorts. “Significant distribution from previous arms to new arms” has created resistance, he stated, however that course of is “wholesome,” widening possession and maturing the market. He framed a psychological and structural line of demarcation at six figures: “Maybe we delineate there the pre-$100K bitcoin world versus the post-$100K bitcoin world. I believe it’s going to look so much completely different.”

He contends gold’s habits helps clarify the current inter-asset divergence. “This nonetheless is the debasement commerce…and it’s the anti-US authorities commerce,” he stated, noting that current gold energy has been “all offshore,” with bids arriving “throughout European and Asian hours,” in step with “overseas central banks and huge…sovereign wealth funds” diversifying away from US publicity.

By distinction, the bitcoin value is pinned to threat urge for food on the edges of the market. That stated, he expects the asset to converge towards a gold-like profile as possession migrates to establishments: “BlackRock’s chilling the digital gold narrative…Fidelity, that is how they speak about it,” he stated, including that as extra provide strikes into the arms of registered funding advisors and passive automobiles, BTC “will…commerce much more like a risk-off, non-sovereign shortage hedge asset.”

The near-term overhang, in his view, is the tariff scare that adopted statements on October 10 about potential 100% levies on China, which “prompted” a leverage washout and stalled a powerful October. “Quite merely an abatement of the tariff conflict between the US and China…would form of set us proper again on track in threat markets,” he stated, anticipating a compromise fairly than a “protracted bloody commerce conflict.”

Thorn additionally downplayed the following Federal Reserve assembly as a catalyst for bitcoin’s course, whereas acknowledging that with official financial knowledge delayed, the Fed’s personal proprietary datasets may make its communication unusually market-relevant: “They’re going to have knowledge. We don’t have knowledge, however they’ll share the info.”

Galaxy Lowers EOY Bitcoin Price Prediction

Against that backdrop, he marked down—however didn’t abandon—his year-end targets. “At the start of the yr, I used to be calling for $150,000 after which $185,000 in This autumn… I’m going to materially draw down that prediction to possibly like $130,000 by EOY,” he stated.

Thorn described 2025’s path as a sluggish, risky stair-step greater—“from like $100k to…$74k to then $126k to now $108l”—with realized volatility declining. To illustrate the regime change, host Joe Consorti highlighted a 90-day realized volatility studying close to 29, far beneath the 2017 and 2021 cycle peaks, and summarized the shifting drivers: “It’s extra of a macro commerce than something…transferring a lot additional into…being impacted…by the macro regime.”

Institutional distribution channels had been a recurring theme. The Galaxy analysis head pointed to wealth-platform entry and custody financial institution initiatives as late-cycle however highly effective accelerants. Thorn cited Morgan Stanley’s move to let advisors suggest a small allocation (2-4%) by means of spot ETFs and stated that three of the 4 largest world custody banks have both launched or introduced digital-asset custody, with one notable holdout.

The implication, he argued, is that the ETF bid and wirehouse adoption are changing the previous, concentrated holder base: “The period of the early bitcoin adopter is now lastly, I believe, absolutely coming to an finish. And now you’re in…no matter that stage is…that is going to be a broadly owned macro asset in all people’s portfolio.”

Macro cross-currents complicate the timing. The AI capital-expenditure increase—he known as it “an important pattern in markets”—is both nearing a speculative blow-off or, in a extra geopolitical framing, simply coming into a Manhattan Project–fashion national-priority part. If the latter proves appropriate, the knock-on results for liquidity, charges, power and semiconductors might be bigger and longer-lived than typical tech cycles.

But for bitcoin particularly, he saved coming again to tariffs because the decisive near-term swing issue and to microstructure as the explanation the chart feels each heavier and sturdier than previous cycles: a passive ETF bid absorbing OG supply at psychologically vital spherical numbers, with out the “huge uplifts” that when adopted contemporary all-time highs.

The base case he outlined isn’t euphoria however endurance. Or, as he put it extra bluntly earlier within the dialog, the bull run hasn’t died—“it’s evolving.”

At press time, BTC traded at $111,183.

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