Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan said Bitcoin may be very close to a bottom, arguing that the market is now showing the kind of apathy and compressed volatility that often appears late in a bear phase. The remarks came in a Bitcoin Magazine podcast aired on Aug. 20 and later compiled by PANews.
Hougan’s broader case was that the next leg higher in Bitcoin may not be led by retail speculation. He expects wealth management channels, especially financial advisors and family offices tied to large brokerage and advisory platforms, to become the central force in the current cycle.
Hougan sees classic late-cycle bottom behavior
Asked whether the familiar four-year cycle has broken down, Hougan said he believes Bitcoin is “very close to the bottom.” If that lines up with the historical cycle, he said, that would make sense, though he stopped short of saying the pattern will repeat in exactly the same way going forward.
His description of the present market was simple: it feels boring. In his view, crypto bear markets often end not with a dramatic collapse, but with indifference, weak momentum, and a long stretch of flat trading. That kind of calm, he said, can hide compressed volatility that later releases to the upside. For that reason, he said he is optimistic about the rest of the year.
Hougan added that the pullback that started on Oct. 10 last year was shaped in part by expectations around the four-year cycle itself. Many investors anticipated a correction and exited early, and that behavior helped bring the correction forward.
He said Bitcoin is now displaying what he considers the usual signals of a market at or near a bottom. One is that bad news no longer seems to knock it down in the same way. Another is that the asset has traded sideways for months, which he described as a strong sign that the supply of willing sellers may be drying up.
Bitcoin as a long-dated call option on a new monetary asset
The host referred to Hougan’s earlier description of Bitcoin at the Bitcoin 2026 conference as “a long-dated out-of-the-money call option” on Bitcoin becoming a global reserve asset. Hougan unpacked the comparison by starting with a standard options framework: the more volatile the underlying asset, the more valuable the option tends to be. He used Nvidia and a utility company as an example, saying an option on Nvidia is generally priced higher because the stock is more volatile and has a better chance of moving into the money.
He applies that logic to Bitcoin because, in his telling, owning Bitcoin is a wager on the possibility that it becomes a new type of monetary asset. If that outcome materializes, he said, the valuation could reach into the tens of trillions of dollars. At the moment, though, he said many people still see that scenario as distant rather than probable.
What matters, in his framework, is that volatility in the global monetary structure itself is rising. He cited a world that looks more confused, potential fractures in dollar dominance, episodes where markets return to pricing things in gold, and discussions such as Iran considering Bitcoin payments. Those developments, he argued, increase uncertainty in the monetary order, which in turn raises the value of Bitcoin as an option on participating in and reshaping that order.
That is why he called Bitcoin a natural hedge against disorder in global standards and monetary arrangements. He said this logic has shown up more than once in the past and could become visible again if global conditions grow more unsettled later this year.
Store of value first, with a larger role possible over the next 5 to 10 years
When the discussion turned to what Bitcoin’s end state might look like, Hougan broke the path into stages. The further out the horizon, he said, the more uncertainty enters the picture. Still, he argued that one stage is already largely established: Bitcoin as a global store of value.
In his view, Bitcoin already shares that role with gold, even if it still represents only a small portion of the gold market. That share has kept rising over Bitcoin’s 17-year history, he said.
Looking 5 to 10 years ahead, Hougan argued that even without some extraordinary surprise, Bitcoin could capture one-third or one-half of gold’s market share simply as an extension of the trend seen over the last 17 years. He then sketched out a valuation framework: if Bitcoin captures one-third of the store-of-value market over the next 10 years and that market continues to grow at the pace seen over the last decade, the price per Bitcoin could reach roughly $1.3 million.
Past that store-of-value stage, he said the clearer path is not full “hyperbitcoinization,” but Bitcoin acting as a check on fiat abuse. He compared that possibility to China adding to gold reserves as a hedge against stress in the monetary system and said more sovereign states are likely to adopt Bitcoin over time. He did not say the world is bound to become entirely Bitcoin-centric, but he described Bitcoin as a strong and durable counterweight to fiat systems.
Institutional acceptance has changed the terms of the debate
Hougan said the tone among institutions has shifted. He pointed to the Harvard endowment, Paul Tudor Jones, Stan Druckenmiller, sovereign wealth funds, and central banks in multiple countries studying the asset. From his standpoint, any objective reading of the market shows Bitcoin continuing to move forward.
The debate, he said, is now more about degree than existence: whether Bitcoin ends up with 10%, 20%, 30%, or 50% of the global store-of-value market. He added that far fewer people now say Bitcoin is dead than in 2021 or 2022.
He also pushed back on the idea that Bitcoin has value only if others agree that it does. In his framing, that is true of nearly every asset and service. He suggested viewing Bitcoin as a service: a way to store wealth without relying on a government or a bank. If no one wants that service, its value would be zero. His bet is that more people will want digital wealth storage outside those institutions, which would mean more demand for Bitcoin exposure.
The “wealth cycle” is where he sees the next inflows coming from
On where the next wave of buyers may come from, Hougan’s answer was direct: wealth management firms, especially financial advisors and family offices.
He named advisors associated with Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Merrill, and UBS as examples of the group he has in mind. According to Hougan, these firms oversee the assets of the wealthiest 10% to 20% of households in the US and around the world. A year ago, he said, this channel had almost no practical access to Bitcoin, despite controlling tens of trillions of dollars.
He described the present market as a “wealth cycle.” In his view, that channel is the decisive source of Bitcoin adoption in this phase. The next cycle, he said, may belong to deeper institutional finance, and the one after that could be shaped by sovereign adoption.
He was careful to add that sovereigns and large institutions are already buying. His point was narrower: the core incremental force in this bull market is more likely to come from wealth platforms. He cited Wells Fargo adding Bitcoin to model portfolios and Morgan Stanley launching its own Bitcoin ETF as examples of why he believes this channel matters.
Why ETF inflows have not yet produced a dramatic price breakout
The host raised a question many investors have asked: if institutions are entering through ETFs, why has the price response seemed muted? Hougan said the answer requires looking at both sides of the ledger.
Bitcoin began as a retail-led market, he said, and the majority of outstanding Bitcoin is still held by retail investors. Over the last two years, institutional money has arrived in size, with nearly $100 billion flowing into Bitcoin ETFs. At the same time, retail distribution created what he called a leaking bucket.
Long-term retail holders, in his telling, sold into the market ahead of the expected four-year cycle turn. So while institutions brought in tens of billions of dollars, much of that demand was absorbed by retail selling, which helps explain why the price did not immediately surge.
Hougan said he is constructive on the end of this year and on next year because, by his reading of the data, that bucket may have stopped leaking. Long-term wallets have started accumulating again. If retail selling has faded and ETF inflows continue, he said, those forces could begin to work together instead of against each other.
Interest rates matter less to Bitcoin now, fiscal conditions matter more
On the macro backdrop, Hougan argued that interest rates are no longer as important to Bitcoin in this cycle as they were in the past. His base case is that rates will mostly move sideways.
He compared the coming policy environment to something closer to the Alan Greenspan era of the 1990s than to the sharper moves associated with Ben Bernanke or Jerome Powell. Since Bitcoin was created, he said, rates have swung from near zero to 2.5%, back to zero, then up to 5%, then back again. In his words, they have behaved like a yo-yo.
Now the macro data look deeply mixed to him. AI creates strong disinflationary pressure on one side, while energy costs and tariffs create inflationary pressure on the other. Because of that mix, he expects rates to stay sticky around the 3% area.
For Bitcoin, he said, the more important variables now sit on the fiscal side: US federal debt above $40 trillion, potential money printing by the Treasury, and the possibility of yield-curve control. He said investors should shift their focus from the Federal Reserve to the fiscal deficit, which he described as fully out of control.
Hougan also said the amount of debt added by the US over the last year exceeded the cumulative total built up in the country’s first 211 years. In his framework, that is the more important driver for Bitcoin.
Japan’s debt burden and the case for holding Bitcoin over yen
The conversation then moved to Japan and the Bank of Japan bond market. Hougan said the US wants to support Japan politically while also avoiding a situation where Japan has to dump US Treasuries to defend the yen. In his view, the US cannot afford a steeper Treasury yield curve when long-term rates are already high.
He described Japan as being trapped in a very difficult debt position, with debt running at multiple times GDP and only limited ways out beyond enduring the situation or inflating the debt away. He added that the US is moving toward a similar trap of its own.
Hougan framed the issue with a blunt thought experiment: if you had spent the last 30 years in Japan, would you rather have owned Bitcoin or yen? His answer was Bitcoin, given what he described as the yen’s long one-way path of depreciation.
Strategy still matters, but its old edge may be gone
The host also asked whether the market still cares about every move by Strategy. Hougan said that importance is fading, much as the market’s sensitivity to rates is fading.
He split Strategy’s rise into two periods. The first came before Bitcoin ETFs existed, when the company could issue stock at a premium to net asset value and use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin. The second came from credit expansion: because Strategy held a very large pool of unencumbered Bitcoin, it could issue debt against that position and lever into another $10 billion to $12 billion in assets.
That setup, he said, has changed. The valuation arbitrage created by the lack of ETFs has disappeared, and Strategy’s debt-to-equity ratio has reached its limits. Unless Bitcoin rises sharply again, he said, the company cannot keep expanding in the same automatic way.
His conclusion was that the old “free lunch” is over. Strategy may now need a more complex, more pro-cyclical treasury game: issuing equity into sharp Bitcoin rallies, then raising cash and buying on pullbacks. He still called the company an important participant and said it has managed assets well, but he suggested its era as the world’s largest single automatic Bitcoin buyer may be ending.
Will there be a “Strategy 2.0”?
Hougan said he asked Michael Saylor that question directly on a Strategy earnings call. According to Hougan, Saylor replied: “No, we’re totally focused on Strategy itself, and we don’t have any more arrows in our quiver.”
Hougan said he is not sure innovation is finished, though he agrees that the company’s main windfall period has likely passed. He does not expect another round of corporate Bitcoin buying to unfold with the same drama as before.
Even so, he said some companies outside the Bitcoin-native category, including names such as SpaceX or Figma, could still put a small share of cash into Bitcoin as part of broader diversification. A 1%, 2%, or 5% treasury allocation may not be the main engine of a bull market, he said, but it would still represent meaningful inflows.
Tokenization, in Hougan’s view, does not compete with Bitcoin
Hougan began that part of the discussion with a clear distinction: tokenized assets and Bitcoin are not in conflict. Satoshi Nakamoto created the blockchain, he said, and the market later discovered other uses for it. These are different applications, not rivals.
To him, the biggest attraction of tokenization is instant settlement. In the current financial system, money often moves the slowest: international bank wires can take three to five days, and stock settlement across markets can still run on T+1, T+2, or even T+3. Once an asset is tokenized, locked, and represented digitally onchain, it can move around the clock with immediate settlement.
He added that tokenized assets can also be used as collateral in the same way Bitcoin can, making them strong collateral assets. His forecast was broad: within the next three to five years, all assets will begin to trade in tokenized form.
Hougan cited two data points to illustrate the pace of growth. Real-world assets, or RWA, have grown 900% over the last 18 months, he said, and the number of wallets holding tokenized assets rose 56% over the last 30 days. That, he argued, is exponential growth that could erase the divide between traditional finance and crypto markets.
A single global market could emerge, but with crypto-style volatility
The host asked whether the world is now moving into a phase of broad asset “crypto-ization.” Hougan said yes.
He noted that US equities currently trade only 33 hours a week, and direct access is still limited to a relatively small slice of global investors. The future he described looks different: stocks, bonds, perpetuals, Bitcoin, gold, and other commodities all trading in the same app and the same wallet, 24/7/365.
In that setup, an investor would no longer need Robinhood for stocks, Coinbase for crypto, and CME for commodities. Access could converge inside decentralized exchanges, while cross-asset hedging and collateralized borrowing become much easier to execute.
Hougan said that sort of market could pull more global capital into rule-of-law markets such as the US. At the same time, it would bring characteristics long associated with crypto into traditional finance.
He highlighted two of them. One is uneven liquidity during round-the-clock trading. Markets may be open all day, but people still sleep, and thinner overnight liquidity could lead traditional equities to see the kind of sharp, disorderly moves common in crypto. The other is leverage. If tokenized assets are easy to post as collateral, leverage can be applied much more easily, which could raise leverage across equity markets and amplify volatility.
Still, Hougan said the trade-off is worth it. A larger, deeper, more liquid, globally connected market with lower execution costs would, in his view, be a better system overall for investors.
Across the conversation, his framework stayed consistent. In the near term, he sees a Bitcoin market close to a boredom-driven bottom. In the middle of the cycle, he sees wealth management channels and ETF flows as the key source of demand. Over a longer horizon, he expects fiscal strain, sovereign interest, and tokenization to reshape both Bitcoin’s role and the structure of global markets.