Bitcoin’s Double Top Signals Caution—But Sygnum Bank’s Tischhauser Sees No Full-Blown Crash Ahead
Bitcoin's forming a worrying double-top pattern—but don't panic-sell just yet. Sygnum Bank's top analyst argues the setup looks more like a speed bump than a cliff edge.
The bear case: History rhymes
Chartists are sweating over BTC's potential double top, a classic reversal pattern that's crushed rallies before. The last time this formation appeared? Right before 2018's brutal 80% bloodbath.
The bull counterpunch: Stronger foundations
Tischhauser points to institutional adoption cushions absent in previous cycles—regulated ETFs now absorb sell pressure that used to trigger death spirals. 'This isn't your degenerate uncle's crypto market anymore,' quips one trader (between sips of a $28 artisanal cold brew).
The bottom line
Volatility? Guaranteed. Armageddon? Unlikely. Just another day in crypto—where 'stablecoins' are anything but, and traditional bankers still pretend they 'never believed in FUD.'
Flows-led bull run
The latest rally, however, is driven mainly by institutional flows rather than the story or pretence that DeFi is better than traditional finance or ethereum is the new world computer, as Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal noted last year.
Since their debut on the Nasdaq in January 2024, the 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have registered net inflows of over $48 billion, per data tracked by Farside Investors. Meanwhile, BTC's adoption as a corporate Treasury asset has picked up the pace, adding to the bull momentum. As of the time of writing, 141 public companies held 841,693 BTC, according to bitcointreasuries.net.
The flows-driven nature of the latest bull run makes it more resilient than the previous bull markets, according to Tischhauser.
"Institutions implement rigorous due diligence and risk assessment before they add a new asset class like bitcoin to the model portfolio. But when they do, the eventual allocation is for the long term. This trend of sticky institutional allocation is just beginning, and the resulting demand will continue to provide price support for some time to come," Tischhauser told CoinDesk.
Tischhauser explained that these investment vehicles are sucking out liquidity, skewing the demand-supply dynamics in favour of a continued uptrend.
"These investment vehicles are sucking liquidity out of the market, which means, every time a new big-ticket investor hits the market with bids, this is addressing less and less supply, and the bullish impact on prices becomes more pronounced," Tischhauser noted.
The halving cycle may be dead
The bearish double-top crash scenario appears plausible to many observers, as we are in the post-halving year, which has historically marked bull market tops, paving the way for year-long bear markets.
Halving is a programmed code in Bitcoin's blockchain that reduces the pace of BTC supply expansion by 50% every four years. The last halving occurred in April 2024 and reduced the per-block BTC reward to 3.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC.
However, the halving cycle may not unfold as expected, as sticky institutional adoption has a greater bearing on price than miners. Moreover, BTC sold by miners, who regulatory offload coins earned to fund operational costs, now accounts for a tiny percentage of the average daily trading volume.
"The change in market leadership means the four-year halving cycle may not play out religiously as it did before. Earlier, most BTC holders were miners, and the BTC issued per year was a huge percentage of the outstanding bitcoin supply. So, selling pressure from miners mattered greatly to the market price. Now, the BTC mined is 0.05-0.1% of the average BTC daily trading volume and halving this supply has no impact on the supply/demand balance in the market. So the halving cycle may be dead," Tischhauser said.
