Crypto Market2026-10-13 05:02:54Zeneca says crypto is moving past spray-and-pray toward a value-investing playbookMarsBit has published a long-form piece by Zeneca arguing that crypto’s old "spray-and-pray" approach is breaking down. Using data from the 2018, 2021 and 2024-2026 cycles, he says median returns among top-100 tokens have deteriorated sharply, while the number of assets that can beat Bitcoin has narrowed. In his example, a $10,000 equal-weight basket of the top 100 tokens bought near the FTX-era bottom on Nov. 20, 2022 and held until the market-cap peak on Oct. 6, 2025 would have grown to about $19,400, versus roughly $76,600 for a Bitcoin-only position. He also argues that capital is increasingly concentrating in a small set of tokens tied to real revenue, buybacks and burns, while thousands of new tokens compete for the same pool of money. The article then lays out a framework inspired by Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett: focus on a small number of projects with real businesses, track how cash moves from customers into the token, compare market value with annual buyback spending, watch unlock schedules, and pay up for growth only when the assumptions embedded in price still look reasonable. Zeneca treats ZEC as an exception, framing it as a value-storage bet rather than a cash-flow token.450
Crypto Market2026-10-13 05:01:05Zeneca says crypto is leaving the spray-and-pray era as a handful of quality tokens pull aheadCrypto investor and writer Zeneca argues that the market has moved away from the old "buy everything and wait" playbook and into a phase where only a small group of stronger assets consistently outperform. Using three sets of cycle data, he says the median return for the top 100 tokens from the post-FTX low to the market-cap peak on Oct. 6, 2025 was only 0.99x, while a simple Bitcoin position would have turned the same $10,000 into about $76,600. He also points to a sharp rise in token buybacks and burns, from roughly $190 million in the year through October 2021 to about $1.85 billion in the year through October 2026, as evidence that parts of crypto are starting to look more like businesses that can be weighed on cash flow rather than pure narrative. In his framework, investors should focus on whether a protocol earns real customer revenue, how much of that value actually reaches the token, where repurchased tokens go, whether unlocks offset buybacks, and whether growth is real or already priced in. Zeneca says his own plan for the next bull market is to hold a small number of tokens backed by real businesses, plus ZEC as a value-storage exception.440
Bitcoin2026-10-08 02:22:09Bitcoin Is Still 31.5% Below Its Record High. History Says That Doesn’t Settle the Bull-Market Debate.Bitcoin climbed back above $86,000 on Oct. 5, with Yahoo Finance quoting BTC at about $86,121. That left the asset up 2.4% over the past week and 8.6% over the past month, even as it remained down 29.3% year over year and roughly 31.5% below its all-time high of $126,198.07 set on Oct. 6, 2025. At the same time, the price has rebounded nearly 48% from the 2026 low of $58,035 recorded on June 25. That mix — a sharp recovery from the lows but a sizable gap to the top — is exactly why the key question has shifted from upside targets to drawdown tolerance. Historical comparisons in the source material point to a clear pattern: 30% pullbacks are common inside Bitcoin uptrends, and even 50% drawdowns have occurred before later highs were made. Examples cited include 2013 and 2021, when BTC suffered deep losses mid-cycle and still went on to set new peaks later in the year. Data compiled by Bitcoin.com also show that peak-to-trough declines have narrowed across cycles, from about 87%, 84%, and 77% in the prior three cycles to roughly 54% in the current one. Yet the pain has not disappeared — it has partly shifted from depth to duration. The report also highlights two near-term markers. The next Federal Reserve meeting is scheduled for Oct. 27-28, and U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs have logged about $4.6 billion in cumulative net inflows since Aug. 19, pushing 2026 net flows back into positive territory at roughly $320 million. Whether those inflows continue will help determine how durable the latest rebound really is.370
Bitcoin2026-10-06 08:07:28Bitcoin Hits 364 Days Since Last Cycle Peak as Analysts Map Out the Next Bull-Market TopBlockBeats reported on Oct. 6 that several analysts, drawing on Bitcoin’s historical price records, see a recurring timing pattern across the past four bull and bear market phases over roughly the last decade. In their breakdown, the move from a cycle low to a cycle high took about 1,064 days in both the 2015-2017 and 2018-2021 periods, while the decline from a cycle high to the next low lasted about 364 days in both the 2017-2018 and 2021-2022 stretches. Based on that framework, the report said Bitcoin’s previous bull market peaked on Oct. 7, 2025, and that the market has now formally moved out of its bear-market bottom and into a new bullish upswing. Against that backdrop, analysts have started publishing targets for this cycle’s potential top. According to BlockBeats’ roundup, analyst alicharts, using long-term charts of major crypto assets, projected a cycle top of $190,000 for Bitcoin and $8,800 for Ether. Veteran trader and chart analyst Peter Brandt said the market has likely already seen the cycle low and is now entering a new Bitcoin bull cycle, while also raising his end-2029 Bitcoin target range from $250,000-$300,000, first shared in July, to $300,000-$600,000. Trader Killa said BTC could break its all-time high between April 26 and Aug. 2, 2027.390
U.S. midterm 2026-10-05 02:33:11Stocks Often Struggle Before U.S. Midterms and Rebound After, but History Does Not Prove CausationWith the next U.S. midterm election set for Nov. 3, 2026, investors are again asking whether the political calendar has a measurable effect on equities. Historical data cited by Certuity, U.S. Bank and Fidelity shows a recurring pattern: returns tend to be weaker in the 12 months leading up to a midterm election, while the 12 months after the vote have often been much stronger. U.S. Bank found that across 31 midterm cycles from 1900 to 2025, average stock market returns in the year before the election were just 2.9%, versus 8.9% across all years in the sample. After the election, the average gain rose to 12.4%, and to 17.5% for cycles since 1980. From 1950 through 2022, the S&P 500 posted positive returns in all 19 one-year periods following midterm election day, with a median gain of about 14.5%. Still, the data does not show that the election itself caused those gains. Weak midterm years such as 1974, 2002 and 2022 were also shaped by stagflation and recession, the fallout from the tech bubble, and high inflation paired with rapid Federal Reserve tightening. The article’s central point is that the midterm cycle is better treated as historical context for market behavior than as a mechanical trading signal.300
Bitcoin2026-09-18 08:47:20James Check says Bitcoin may have already found its cycle bottom near $58KBitcoin may have already set its cycle low near $58,000, according to Checkonchain founder and lead analyst James Check, who argues that two separate capitulation phases have already cleared much of the market’s selling pressure. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Check said Bitcoin’s drop toward $60,000 in February marked a "price-pain capitulation," while the stretch around $58,000 in June and July reflected a later "time-pain capitulation" after months of sideways trading wore down holders. His view runs against expectations from some traders who still look to the historical four-year cycle and expect another low around October 2026. Check said that framework has no mechanical basis and can mislead traders if used as a timing tool on its own. Instead, he pointed to cost basis, realized and unrealized losses, holder profitability, and whether seasoned investors are accumulating or distributing. Check said roughly $300 billion in Bitcoin cost basis sat between $58,000 and $70,000, and about 4 million BTC moved from unrealized loss into profit during the rebound. Grayscale research head Zach Pandl offered a similar view, saying he believes the bottom likely came at the end of June near $58,000. Still, onchain signals remain mixed, with HODL Waves and CryptoQuant data pointing to different readings on the strength of the recovery.630
Blockchain Ca2026-09-16 00:30:41Blockchain Capital investor says crypto compressed market cycles, with AI now showing similar patternsBlockchain Capital investor Jonah Burian said crypto has accelerated the speed of market cycles, giving early-stage companies liquidity through tokens while exposing market behavior in public. In his view, those lessons now offer a useful lens for AI investing. He argued that outsized winners tend to trigger copycat capital formation and FOMO: after Bitcoin reached a trillion-dollar scale, Ethereum and Solana helped convince investors that more large outcomes were possible, which fed the boom in alt-L1 funding. Burian said a similar setup is emerging in AI, where OpenAI and Anthropic are moving toward trillion-dollar scale and newer labs are being valued like lottery tickets. He contrasted the two markets by noting that crypto token prices were formed in public trading venues, while AI valuations are now developing in opaque, semi-liquid secondary markets. Burian also drew a parallel on value capture, saying blockspace eventually became abundant and commoditized, with applications taking most of the value. He suggested AI models could face the same pressure, pushing profits toward applications and hardware instead. He added that periods of frenzy often lead financial capital to overfund infrastructure, and said the history of crypto and alt-L1 should be enough to justify skepticism toward current AI lab bets, unless AGI arrives.1020
Changpeng Zha2026-08-25 13:00:00CZ says most people should DCA into major crypto instead of going all-inBinance founder Changpeng Zhao said he would not tell people to repeat his 2014 decision to sell an apartment and put everything into Bitcoin if that property represents most of their wealth. In a community Q&A at Binance Clubhouse Bali 2026, Zhao said most people are better served by dollar-cost averaging 1%, 5%, or 10% of monthly income into major crypto assets they trust. The discussion also covered his changed views on NFTs, meme coins, and real-world assets, his belief that the four-year cycle still looks intact, and his view that the next major catalyst cannot be called in advance. Zhao also spoke at length about AI, saying blockchain-based payment rails are a better fit for AI agents than credit cards because they are programmable, borderless, and less dependent on human verification steps. He added that Giggle Academy, which he said now serves more than 1 million children, found that fully AI-driven teaching does not work well for kids ages 2 to 6, leading the team to keep humans in charge while using AI to generate content components.1080
