Fidelity Labs managing partner Parth Gargava says bitcoin may be transitioning away from its familiar, halving-linked four-year rhythm and into something closer to a “supercycle”, a regime that could keep prices elevated for longer and make drawdowns less severe, if structural demand continues to build. Speaking in Fidelity’s Jan. 9 crypto outlook for 2026 video, Gargava anchored the discussion in the cycle framework many market participants have used for years: peaks arriving roughly a year and a half after each halving. “Traditionally, what we have seen is Bitcoin has had this four-year cycle,” he said, adding that the pattern has been “highly correlated to Bitcoin’s halving events.” He pointed to the 2016 halving followed by a peak in December 2017 near $20,000, and the 2020 halving followed by another peak in 2021 about 18 months later. That history matters because it frames the debate around the most recent halving in April 2024. Gargava acknowledged the straightforward inference some investors make from prior cycles: “So maybe we are past that peak price.” But he positioned that view as only one side of the argument, highlighting a competing thesis that the market’s structure is evolving. Related Reading: Bitcoin HODLer Selloff Ending? LTH Outflows Decline “On the other side, you’re also seeing a lot of arguments around how we might have entered into a supercycle as opposed to what we have seen in the past four years,” Gargava said. “And what a super cycle really means is you might have more prolonged highs, longer highs, and shallower dips.” Gargava credited Fidelity Digital Assets’ research team for outlining what he called the “super cycle mechanism,” and suggested an analogy to the commodities market in the 2000s. The key point was not that bitcoin would mechanically copy commodities, but that a sustained, multi-year bid can alter how markets behave, extending expansions and compressing the depth of selloffs. JUST IN: $5 trillion Fidelity talks about how #Bitcoin might have entered a “supercycle” Bullish ???? pic.twitter.com/IUv3GVHwEW — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) January 12, 2026 Three Forces That Could Push Bitcoin Into A Supercycle He outlined three drivers he believes could underpin that kind of regime shift. First is “steady buy-in by institutions focused on ETFs,” which Gargava framed as persistent demand rather than episodic speculative bursts. In his telling, ETFs can function as a channel that keeps incremental capital flowing even when sentiment softens, potentially changing the market’s typical post-peak unwind. Related Reading: Bitcoin Tops $92,000 As DOJ Subpoenas Escalate Trump-Powell Fight Second is policy. Gargava pointed to “pro-crypto policies” in the US as a supportive backdrop, implying that a friendlier regulatory stance could reduce headline risk and encourage broader participation from investors and intermediaries that previously stayed on the sidelines. Third is market maturation and changing correlations. “We’re also seeing how the crypto market as a whole is maturing and deviating from the S&P 500 and precious metals,” he said. The implication is that bitcoin’s trading behavior may be becoming less captive to traditional risk-asset moves and the simple “digital gold” narrative, an evolution that could matter for positioning, hedging, and macro sensitivity. Notably, Gargava did not claim the four-year cycle is definitively broken. Instead, he presented a live question for 2026: whether bitcoin continues to follow a post-halving path that culminates in a familiar, sharp boom-and-bust pattern, or whether structural forces: ETF-driven institutional demand, a more supportive US policy tone, and a maturing market profile support a longer, steadier expansion with “shallower dips.” At press time, Bitcoin traded at $92,182. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Popular market analyst KillaXBT has shared a bold prediction of a Bitcoin super cycle. After multiple failed “super cycle” calls by other market enthusiasts, the anonymous market expert argues that Bitcoin’s defining breakout has yet to begin, highlighting a key market condition. Related Reading: Bitcoin Short-Term Holders Face Prolonged Pain As Key Metric Stays Red Metal Market Downtrend, Bitcoin Supertrend According to KillaXBT in an X post on December 27, the real super cycle will only emerge when capital decisively rotates away from precious metals and into Bitcoin, marking a generational shift rather than a typical crypto rally. Unlike past “premature” super-cycle narratives, driven more by optimism, the analyst references a budding price structure similarity that indicates a massive Bitcoin price rally ahead. Notably, interest in precious metals is soaring after gold and silver recently reached new ATH prices of $4,500 and $77, respectively. Similar to most analysts, KillaXBT anticipates these precious metals will eventually slip into a multi-year downtrend that will force investors to explore other havens against inflation. In particular, the analyst expects older generations to remain anchored in gold, while a new cohort of capital increasingly chooses Bitcoin as its preferred store of value. As metals underperform, a scarce Bitcoin is tipped to record an unprecedented demand. The analyst draws a historical parallel between gold in early 1972 and Bitcoin’s current position heading into 2027. In this period, Gold entered a powerful multi-year run as capital sought protection from inflation and currency debasement. KillaXBT argues Bitcoin is approaching a similar inflection point and is set to outperform every major asset class in the next cycle. Interestingly, gold, long considered the ultimate store of value, is currently valued at an estimated $31.7 trillion in market cap value. Bitcoin, by contrast, sits near $1.83 trillion. KillaXBT explains that even at a Bitcoin price of $200,000, the network’s market cap would rise to roughly $5 trillion, still about six times smaller than gold, highlighting how early Bitcoin remains in the global asset hierarchy. Related Reading: Ethereum Investors Slide Deeper Into Losses – What The Drop Below $3,000 Means This Is The Last Sub $100,000 Bear Market – Analyst In concluding notes, KillaXBT states that skepticism has accompanied every major Bitcoin rally, consistently peaking just before large upside moves. In past cycles, critics pointed to regulation, environmental concerns, and volatility risks. Today, the fear narrative has shifted to emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing. The analyst suggests that these concerns may once again pressure investors out of the market prematurely. However, KillaXBT is taking a bullish stance as they believe the current phase could represent the final prolonged bear market in which Bitcoin trades below $100,000. However, they warn that investors should expect the supercycle boom in 2027, as 2026 is likely to be a bearish period. Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from Tradingview
Bitcoin’s next leg higher sits inside a broader “everything, everywhere, all at once” bull market that echoes the 1950s more than the 1990s—and the underlying engine is fiat debasement that will continue to funnel monetary premiums into neutral reserve assets such as Bitcoin and gold. That is the core of veteran macro analyst and investor Mel Mattison’s thesis in a wide-ranging interview on Milk Road Macro published Monday, October 7. Mattison, a former fintech executive with 25+ years in finance, argues that investors are misreading the cycle by citing relationships from the 1970s and 1980s instead of the earlier regimes that rhyme more closely with today. “I actually think the most similar decade is the 50s,” he said, noting that the S&P 500’s average annual return then “was over 19%,” outpacing the 1990s. He described 2024–2025 as an “everything everywhere all at once rally… bonds, stocks, gold, Bitcoin, real estate,” driven by a multi-decade interest-rate cycle and a global “debasement trade” that has finally gone mainstream. “The scariest thing to me right now is that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are saying the same thing that I was a year ago.” Bitcoin And Gold To Dominate The Debasement Era Within that framework, Bitcoin plays the role of digital gold—one of two “neutral reserve assets” poised, in Mattison’s view, to absorb more monetary premium as the fiat system adapts to rising debt loads and geopolitical realignment. He framed the moment as a “gold war, not a cold war,” pointing to the steady build-up of official gold reserves and alternative settlement rails. Related Reading: Bitcoin Will Not Crash: Jeff Park Rejects Paul Tudor Jones’ 1999 Comparison “People do not understand… this is just getting started,” he said of the bull market in both gold and Bitcoin. While he sees gold as temporarily stretched near-term, he reiterated a long-horizon target in line with arguments from other macro commentators: “Do I think [gold is] going to $20,000 in the next 10 to 15 years? Yes, absolutely.” Bitcoin, he suggested, shares in that secular bid as the programmable counterpart: “Bitcoin I see as digital gold and that’s being accepted.” Mattison’s supercycle call rests heavily on policy architecture. He contends that markets are underpricing the US Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate to maintain “moderate long-term interest rates,” alongside price stability and maximum employment. “Under the statute, the FOMC has three distinct mandates… unemployment, price stability, and making sure that long-term interest rates are moderate,” he said, criticizing the idea that the third leg is secondary. In practice, he expects this to pull policymakers toward yield-curve control (YCC)–style interventions if needed to cap long-tenor yields and stabilize debt service. “There’s no way that they can let interest rates get out of hand,” he argued, adding that the Fed could halt quantitative tightening and significantly expand its balance sheet without necessarily reigniting 2021–2022-style inflation. “The Federal Reserve could… easily take [its balance sheet] to $20 trillion in the next decade without creating massive inflation,” he claimed, emphasizing that money-supply growth and velocity, not the level of public debt per se, drive sustained price pressure. That policy trajectory, in his telling, is inherently supportive of assets with monetary characteristics. He dismissed recurring fears over foreign selling of Treasuries: “When people talk about… China or Japan [selling], there’s no threat from that,” he said, arguing that domestic absorption—by banks, mutual funds, stablecoin balance sheets, or the Fed itself—can readily backstop issuance. Related Reading: Bitcoin STH Whale Profits Hit $10.1 Billion, Highest For The Cycle He called interest payments “stimulus,” preferring they recycle to US holders rather than abroad. In this setting, he believes index-heavy exposure will underperform active positioning in the new winners: “To me the big alpha is… in gold and bitcoin,” with emerging markets also benefiting from easier global financial conditions if YCC or related measures anchor US duration. Markets Can Go Much Higher For Longer Mattison’s historical lens also shapes his risk calendar. He likens the current mix of post-pandemic fiscal-monetary coordination and geopolitical fault lines to the period spanning World War II, the Marshall Plan, and the Korean War. He expects the rally to broaden beyond mega-cap tech as artificial intelligence redistributes value away from traditional SaaS moats, but he also flags a latent social-cohesion shock—an eventual phase when “not only do you want to reduce, you want to just get out of risk… even gold.” The timing, he said, is not imminent: “I honestly think that’s at least 12 to 24 months away at a minimum and possibly longer.” Until then, he urges investors not to underestimate how far markets—and Bitcoin—can run in a true bubble phase. “If you’ve never lived through [the late 1920s or late 1990s], you don’t understand what the markets can actually do,” he said. “In a bubble environment, which I think we’re heading into, it can go a lot higher and a lot quicker.” Why This Could Be the Biggest Bull Run Since the 1950s w/ @MelMattison1 Want to know how we survive $34T of U.S. debt? Mel makes the contrarian case for why debt isn’t the problem… and why interest payments could actually stimulate the economy. Tune in to know more ⏱ TIME… pic.twitter.com/TqZML1j9TZ — Milk Road Macro (@MilkRoadMacro) October 7, 2025 For Bitcoin specifically, the implication is straightforward in Mattison’s model: as long as the policy mix trends toward looser effective financial conditions to manage public debt and geopolitical competition channels settlement into neutral assets, BTC accrues monetary premium alongside gold. Near term he anticipates volatility—“very short term [gold is] due for… a rest,” he noted, implying risk for correlated trades—but the secular path, he insists, remains higher. “I’m not saying this time is different,” he said. “I’m actually saying this time is like all the other times”—just not within the living memory of most investors. At press time, BTC traded at $122,451. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
Bitcoin punched through a fresh record above $122,000 on the morning of 14 July, extending its month-long rally to more than 16 percent. Against that backdrop, Charles Edwards—the founder and chief executive of digital-asset hedge fund Capriole Investments—argues that the market is only “in the early stages” of a much broader liquidity-driven boom that could dominate the rest of 2025 and beyond. The Bitcoin Liquidity Supercycle In the latest Capriole newsletter, Edwards contends that “money and liquidity provided the backdrop for capital flows, and Bitcoin Treasury Companies are the funnel.” He dismisses the idea that the past fortnight’s $20,000 advance was a technical accident, pointing instead to deep macro currents that have been building for months. “The biggest Bitcoin rallies occur when the market is net short the USD,” he writes, pointing to Capriole’s proprietary “USD Positioning” gauge, which aggregates futures data across major currencies. The metric has been “deeply negative” since early summer, signalling that global investors are decisively betting against the dollar and in favour of hard assets. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Could Soar To $146K In The Next Leg Up — Analyst Explains How Another pillar is credit. BBB-rated corporate-bond spreads have been grinding tighter since the spring, a classic risk-on signal in traditional markets that, since 2020, has mapped almost tick-for-tick onto major Bitcoin up-moves. “More evidence,” Edwards notes, “that Bitcoin is a tradfi asset.” Perhaps the strongest tail-wind, however, is raw money growth. Global M3 has been expanding at an annualised nine percent clip—an historically extreme rate that Capriole says last coincided with average 12-month Bitcoin returns of roughly 460 percent. Edwards cautions that, as a multi-trillion-dollar asset today, Bitcoin is unlikely to repeat that magnitude, “but it wouldn’t be surprising to see something very substantial from here.” Capriole’s framework also draws on an historical lead-lag relationship between gold and Bitcoin. When bullion enters a meaningful breakout, Bitcoin has tended to follow three to four months later. Gold’s early-2025 surge—and its outperformance versus global equities—therefore offered “strong support for the current market’s diminishing demand for fiat money and favour of hard money,” Edwards argues. Since Capriole flagged gold’s move in April, Bitcoin has risen 28 percent. Equities, too, are offering green lights. The New York Stock Exchange advance–decline line broke to new highs last week, while Capriole’s “Equity Premium” indicator reset to zero in late May—both historically consistent with multi-month stretches of expanding risk appetite. All of those data points feed into the firm’s flagship Bitcoin Macro Index, a composite of dozens of public and proprietary variables that Capriole uses to shape trading exposures in its fund. The index “is still in strong positive growth territory,” Edwards reports, even after the coin’s latest vertical move. That suggests the underlying drivers—liquidity, risk sentiment and on-chain activity—“remain intact.” The Bitcoin Treasury-Company Flywheel Yet perhaps the most striking piece of the puzzle lies outside pure macro. Edwards highlights the emergence of Bitcoin Treasury Companies (TCs)—corporate vehicles that raise fiat capital in equity or debt markets and then deploy it into spot BTC—as the new “primary bubble dynamic of this cycle.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Soars Past $118,800—Breakout Or Brutal Bull Trap? Quarterly inflows into TCs reached $15 billion in Q2, and Capriole counts at least 145 such firms now pursuing the strategy. With their market capitalisations inflated by paper gains on balance-sheet coins, they can tap ever-larger funding rounds—a reflexive loop that Edwards believes “will likely help add over $1 trillion to Bitcoin’s market cap over the next year.” He rejects the notion that this amounts to unhealthy centralisation: “If Bitcoin is to one day become base money, it needs to scale to tens of trillions to flatten volatility. The only way that happens is mass acquisition like we are seeing today.” Edwards stresses that his analysis sits on a months-long horizon. “When Bitcoin sees huge rallies there are always strong pullbacks and local overheating,” he concedes, adding that the newsletter deliberately sidelines short-term on-chain froth to focus on the “bigger picture and driving factors for the next six months.” Still, with central-bank liquidity abundant, the dollar crowded short, credit stress muted and a structurally new pool of corporate buyers stepping in, Capriole’s conclusion is unambiguous: the liquidity tap is wide open, and the Bitcoin supercycle it feeds has only just begun. “While today’s early adopters may be seen as speculators, it will be very obvious in hindsight. After the Treasury company wave is the Government treasury wave (next cycle). We are simply riding the adoption curve which requires trillions of dollars to flow in to Bitcoin from the entities that have it in order to achieve scale,” Edwards concludes. At press time, BTC traded at $122,438. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
At Sui Basecamp, macro investor and Real Vision co-founder Raoul Pal delivered a characteristically sweeping address that framed the current crypto market environment as the beginning of what he called a “liquidity-driven supercycle” — with Bitcoin potentially reaching $450,000 before the end of it. Drawing from over three decades of macroeconomic research, Pal outlined his thesis through the lens of what he terms the “Everything Code,” a framework that centers on global liquidity, debt cycles, and currency debasement as the core forces shaping asset prices across all markets. Why $450,000 Bitcoin Is Possible? “Bitcoin’s year-on-year rate of change is driven by financial conditions with a three-month lag,” said Pal, pointing to the remarkably consistent correlation between total global liquidity and the price action of major assets. “The correlation between Bitcoin and global liquidity is 90%, and with the Nasdaq, it’s 95%. It’s hard to refute that this is not what is happening.” According to Pal, this correlation is not incidental — it is structurally tied to how the modern macro system operates, especially in a post-2008 world characterized by chronic debt overhang and systematic liquidity injections. Pal emphasized that most people misunderstand the true driver of crypto cycles. “Everyone talks about the halving, but this is about the debt refi cycle. Every four years, global debt rolls over, and central banks are forced to pump liquidity to avoid systemic collapse.” He added that the average maturity of global debt is four years, concentrated in the three- to five-year sector, which naturally produces cyclical liquidity waves that coincide with market booms in crypto. The mechanism, Pal argued, is a global financial shell game: “Scarce assets keep going up in price — real estate, equities, art, gold. Young people can’t afford them. What’s actually happening is a global taxation of 8% a year you don’t understand. Add in another 3% global inflation, and you’re looking at 11% debasement.” In this context, Bitcoin — with its fixed supply and decentralized nature — becomes, in Pal’s view, a rational escape valve for capital. Related Reading: Bitcoin Recovery Fueled By Almost $19 Billion In Crypto Inflows, Data Shows Notably, Pal referred to Bitcoin as the single best-performing asset in all of financial history, citing a 27.5 million percent return since 2012 and an average annualized return of 130%, despite massive drawdowns. “Nothing has ever come close,” he said, before comparing its performance to that of Ethereum (113%) and Solana (142%), with the caveat that Solana’s data covers a shorter timeframe. While some of his statements may appear hyperbolic, Pal backed them with a detailed macro analysis and time-tested indicators. He invoked his use of Demark indicators — a technical analysis tool — which flagged significant market turning points in prior cycles, and are now suggesting a breakout continuation for Bitcoin. According to his models, should the ISM (Institute for Supply Management) Manufacturing Index reach a level of 57, Bitcoin could be fairly priced at $450,000. “Is it exact? No. But all the people who are saying it’s going to $150K or $250K are probably scarred from the last cycle,” Pal argued, stressing the importance of forward-looking data. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Faces Stiff Resistance: Is Another Drop on the Horizon? He also dismissed current bearish sentiment as misguided and backward-looking: “People are creating narratives for today to explain liquidity conditions from three months ago,” he said, criticizing popular economic commentary on platforms like X. To Pal, the market has already priced in recent economic weakness — including fears surrounding tariffs, the slowing economy, and geopolitical tensions — and is beginning to pivot toward the next liquidity expansion phase. “Bitcoin’s already priced it down to 47.4 on the business cycle indicator,” he said, referencing data that had only just come out the day before. “But financial conditions lead by nine months, and they’re turning.” When Will BTC Peak? Pal’s broader view is that we are now entering “the banana zone,” his term for the high-velocity portion of the crypto cycle where prices move sharply upward. “Every cycle looks the same. Breakout, retest, banana zone. We’ve had banana one, the corrective zone, banana two. What’s next is banana three.” He believes the current setup is unusually strong due to a confluence of factors: synchronized global liquidity expansion, a weakening dollar, central banks beginning to ease, and retail plus institutional underexposure to risk assets. As he concluded his speech, Pal reinforced his thesis with urgency but caution: “We’ve got the central banks debasing currency, giving us a gigantic tailwind. They don’t want the system to break. Every time something happens, they inject more liquidity. They’re giving you free money. And to take that money, you need the volatility.” He warned against overtrading, using leverage, or panicking during inevitable corrections. “Don’t f*** this up,” he said, referencing his own past mistakes during the 2017 bull run. “Hold on to your tokens. Be careful. Don’t get FOMO. Follow the liquidity.” Pal expects this cycle to extend potentially into Q1 or Q2 of 2026, especially if political dynamics around a possible Trump re-election push the liquidity cycle even further. Whether Bitcoin ultimately reaches $450,000 remains to be seen, but Pal’s thesis is clear: the macro tailwinds are aligned, the data supports it, and this may be — as he puts it — “the greatest macro opportunity of all time.” At press time, BTC traded at $94,191. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com