Strive CEO Says the Crypto Bear Market Is Over, Sees Bitcoin's Strongest Cycle Ahead

Strive CEO Matt Cole says the Bitcoin bear market is over, and he thinks the next cycle may be the strongest in the asset’s history. Cole bases that view on two structural forces: a possible long-term decline in the U.S. dollar and an AI-era reappraisal of scarcity. As intelligence becomes cheaper and easier to copy, he says capital is likely to place more value on assets that cannot be replicated at scale. In his view, that matters for Bitcoin, gold and silver alike. The BTC/gold ratio is the other signal he is watching. Cole says it has often turned before BTC/USD, and that pattern mattered in the last cycle. Bitcoin against gold peaked in December 2024, while Bitcoin in dollar terms did not peak until October 2025. During that stretch, BTC/USD kept setting new highs, but BTC/gold had already stopped doing so. Cole says that kind of divergence matters for a monetary asset still in a growth phase. A bull market lasts because fresh capital and liquidity keep feeding a positive feedback loop. If Bitcoin keeps rising in dollars but loses ground to gold, that underlying strength is weaker than it looks. He says the bottoming process showed the same pattern in reverse. Bitcoin against gold found a low in February 2026, about five months before Bitcoin in dollars bottomed in July 2026. For him, that made BTC/gold an important clue that the bear market was closer to ending than BTC/USD alone suggested. Cole also points to a different backdrop than in past bear markets. Financing conditions did not tighten as sharply, and the broader equity market kept making new highs. This time, the weakness was concentrated in Bitcoin and Bitcoin-linked assets. Against that backdrop, he says, Bitcoin has now broken above both the dollar and gold. A pullback would not surprise him, he says, but he would also not be surprised if it never comes. If a deeper retracement does appear, he expects buyers to step in. Cole says that same framework shaped how Strive was built. The company does not use debt, margin requirements or any structure that could lead to forced liquidation. The point is to increase exposure to Bitcoin upside while staying within what the company can responsibly bear. He argues that the bigger risk for a company tied to a high-upside asset is being too conservative. If Bitcoin rises sharply and a company waits for operating cash flow before buying, it may end up paying more for less Bitcoin. Strive’s approach is the opposite: deploy capital into Bitcoin as directly as possible, while keeping strict capital discipline. During the bear market, Strive kept buying. Cole says the company was purchasing Bitcoin almost every week in the months before the latest breakout, giving the structure a live-market test under stress. He also notes that ASST bottomed in February, well before the broader Bitcoin-equity group bottomed around July. He does not think that timing was a coincidence. In his view, the market first turned in the assets most sensitive to improving liquidity and rising risk appetite. If he is right, Cole says, the next phase could reward assets with more upside torque. He believes Strive’s balance sheet, liquidity profile and Bitcoin amplification model could make ASST one of the vehicles that attracts incremental capital. For Cole, the real story is not just that Bitcoin may rise. It is that Bitcoin may take a larger share of a growing pool of scarcity assets, with gold as its main reference point. If dollar weakness, AI-driven scarcity demand and a stronger BTC/gold ratio all move in the same direction, he says Bitcoin could enter the most favorable macro and relative-performance setup in its history.