Why bitcoin's rebound indicates the cryptocurrency may have hit a bottom

All right, are we calling this a dead cat bounce? I think what a lot of investors, a lot of traders, a lot of holders want to know is when do we see this bottom? Do you think there's a cycle in play, the four-year cycle? Well, if anybody has a crystal ball that works better than mine, they can send it over because I'm not quite sure if it's a dead cat bounce or the bottom. But to me, this does feel like it could be a bottom and there's a number of reasons for that. Technically, a lot of people are looking at the 200 MA on the weekly chart, a line that's been visited every single time the 50 MA is broken in a bear market. That's at about 57, 58,000 right now. The monthly 50 MA is there. Yesterday, we saw major capitulation volume, systematic selling all the way down to the close. But today's volume is actually going to close higher on the buy side than all of yesterday's sell volume combined. And across the board, not just on Bitcoin, across the crypto market, we're seeing some bullish engulfing candles, some beautiful potential bottoms being put in. So I think that we saw bearish euphoria at a fever pitch yesterday, and now we're probably going to be heading up barring any major black swans. As for the four-year cycle, I'm in the camp that the four-year cycle is over if it was ever there in the past. We do have one data point for people who believe, which was that the all-time high would come in October, but nothing else about this cycle has looked like the past. There was really no movement across the crypto market beyond Bitcoin or anything that had an ETF. And we had an all-time high way too early because of the approval of the ETFs, really just doesn't feel like the same cycles as we had before. That was kind of my thought last year. I was asking a number of guests in 2025, we have the most bullish regulatory backdrop for Bitcoin or crypto that I think you could ever have. And we still saw things kind of peter out a number of times. I thought the gains should have been bigger given the backdrop. Does Bitcoin, does crypto need a new narrative beyond Web3 here? I don't think that it needs a new narrative. I think that the best narrative for Bitcoin is always higher prices. Unfortunately, Bitcoin starts to go up. That takes money. Retail gets very excited. It does, but it's not very hard to push this market around. To your point about the environment, yes, we have a very favorable legislative environment. We have a very favorable regulatory environment. Obviously, the pendulum has swung massively from the contentious environment that we had with the previous administration. But that said, I think all of that was effectively priced in at the moment that Donald Trump was elected. And so it's not that crazy that prices are now trading back to the same area that they were at that point. Also, with the election of Donald Trump, there's a bit of a push and pull. I think a lot of people are very unhappy and it's become politically charged that his family and himself are so involved in the industry itself that that has become a bit of a political talking point yet again for the quote-unquote anti-crypto army. So I don't know what the next catalyst will be, but I do know that Bitcoin is becoming massively institutionalized. You have news from every single wire house, every large institution about their participation in this industry and the unlocks and the incredible volumes of the ETF. So this is one of those times when prices have been beat down, sentiment is low, but there's crazy fundamental news that should be driving price up. And we're gonna look back in a few months and go, wow, those news events were absolutely huge. We should have been paying attention. So Bitcoin usually gets almost all the headlines, especially when it comes to mom and pop investors and there's been all kinds of stories on the institutionalization. People can buy them in their 401ks. But what about some of the altcoins and what about Ethereum itself? If we can go to the Wi-Fi Interactive, I have our cryptocurrency heat map here and it shows the year-to-date performance. So here's Ethereum down 31%, Bitcoin down 20%. If I sort by performance, the final row here, I mean, it gets all the way down to 50% and we're only in February. Do some of these altcoins have a chance of coming back even if Bitcoin manages to do so? Many of them absolutely do, but I have a haunting feeling that we're gonna be in a world of have and have nots. And the haves are gonna be those that have ETFs, treasury companies, some level of institutional adoption, institutions actually using their blockchains for various purposes. And the have nots will be those that are left behind only to be traded by retail on crypto native exchanges that institutional investors don't have access to. So I would keep a very close watch on that. I mean, right now, obviously, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and others have ETFs or have narratives like that that have compelled them to have higher prices than many others. I don't think we see, for those who've been in crypto a while, we used to have what we like to call an alt season where altcoins just go absolutely crazy. You can talk about 10, 50, 100 Xs and you throw a dart and the next one goes. I don't think we ever see that again. I think we're going to actually have to look at utility and fundamentals and valuations like with other markets. But I do think that a lot of those tokens will do exceptionally well. And what about the Bitcoin treasury companies and the other treasury companies that might have Ethereum? With MicroStrategy, of course, Michael Saylor's strategy is the biggest, most famous of them. What happens to them? Obviously, higher prices, record highs would kind of cure the situation, but the strategy itself has taken a beating and it's been a high beta play on Bitcoin. Does it lose that edge? Does it regain it with higher Bitcoin prices? How do you see that playing out? Volatility to the upside would be exceptionally good for MicroStrategy or strategy and probably other treasury companies. That said, I've told this story many times, but I went to the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas in May and I was pitched seven Bitcoin treasury companies in the first five minutes I was there. And I became probably the most aggressively outspoken voice in our industry against the idea of the treasury companies. I said they would likely be a bubble, they would be the reason for the next Bitcoin collapse. I didn't necessarily expect it to happen so fast, but that's one thing that had my spidey senses tingling from the very beginning. I think that there's room for MicroStrategy, there's not room for many more, right? And Bitcoin itself is a very hard asset to use, to beat using Bitcoin. It actually intellectually makes sense for an Ethereum or a Solana treasury company because they can stake in the network, earn a yield, and then they can actually beat the performance of that underlying token. You can argue whether that token should be a treasury asset or not. That's not for me, I believe Bitcoin should. But I was always a big fan of a company taking their actual profits and cashflow and putting some of that into a Bitcoin as a hedge against the losses on their cash. But actually financially engineering around Bitcoin, Saylor can do it, but I'm not sure anybody else can. All right, circling back to the beginning here, we're talking about the bottom, at least the tradable bottom that we have right now. Does it lead to more selling in a few weeks? We don't know, but you sound kind of bullish. So give us your bear case for 2026. How does that play out? I think the bear case is that Bitcoin continues to drift lower. There's really no meaningful catalyst. And honestly, at this point, I think the biggest bear case for Bitcoin is if the stock market falls over, right? I mean, I think we can all take a look at stocks at the current valuations and people are scared. We had this interesting moment a few weeks ago where the stock fear and greed index was at extreme fear with stocks 2% off all time highs, right? So people are very scared even though stocks are very high. So I think we see some black swan event, all correlations go to one and everything goes down together. That said, when's the last time that happened? March of 2020, right? Bitcoin dropped from 6,000 to below 4,000 in a matter of hours on March 12th with the COVID scare. 13 days later, I believe the stock market bottomed. Well, the stock market pulled a cute 2X from there and everybody talked about how amazing that stock market was. Bitcoin went up 17 times. So if we do see an event like that, what asset do you wanna be in for the inevitable ascent out of that hole? So I am very bullish on Bitcoin here. I see a lot of reasons for it to go up. I think that the selling has reached a capitulation and a rational euphoria, as I said, and I'm very bullish. Scott, it's been great talking with you. Thank you for all your insights here. Thank you.