Bitwise Declares Crypto Bear Market Bottom Hit in Q4 2025—Here’s Why They’re Betting on the Rebound
Forget the red on your screen. One major player just called the bottom.
The Contrarian Call
While retail investors panicked and headlines screamed collapse, Bitwise Asset Management made a bold declaration. They insist the crypto winter reached its absolute nadir in the final quarter of 2025. It's a stance that flies in the face of falling prices and mainstream sentiment—a classic buy-when-there's-blood-in-the-streets move that separates tourists from veterans.
Reading the Tape, Not the Headlines
The analysis hinges on on-chain metrics and market structure, not daily price gyrations. Think miner capitulation, exchange outflows, and derivative market resets—the kind of boring, technical stuff that actually signals a turn before the crowd catches on. It's the financial equivalent of noticing the foundations being poured while everyone else is mourning the demolished building.
The Road Ahead
If Bitwise is right, the current price action is just noise—the final shakeout before a new cycle begins. It sets the stage for accumulation, infrastructure building, and the slow, steady climb that historically follows true market bottoms. Of course, this requires ignoring the short-term pain for potential long-term gain, a strategy about as popular as a banker at a crypto-anarchist convention.
Timing the market is a fool's errand, but identifying a regime change isn't. Bitwise isn't predicting a moon shot tomorrow; they're betting the darkest hour has passed. Now we see who was building during the storm and who was just watching the rain—after all, the real money in finance is made by being decisively early, or convincingly lucky.
Similar pattern seen after FTX collapse
Hougan drew comparisons to early 2023, right after the FTX exchange went under. Back then, crypto seemed stuck even though things were actually getting better behind the scenes. bitcoin climbed from around $16,000 to roughly $98,000 by the beginning of 2025.
“At the time, we were starting to rebound post-FTX, and the data was topsy-turvy; some up, some down, some sideways,” Hougan said. “In the two years that followed, crypto prices soared.”
The same split between how people felt and what the numbers showed happened again at the end of 2025, according to Hougan. Prices dropped, but important signs of health across the crypto world jumped higher.
Experts don’t agree on what comes next. Tom Lee from Fundstrat thinks economic problems like trade tariffs and political questions could hurt markets through most of 2026 before things pick up late in the year.
VanEck sees it differently, expecting the first three months of 2026 to be good for riskier investments like crypto because of clearer government spending plans and a steadier American economy.
Four signs point to market recovery
Hougan pointed to four developments from the fourth quarter that support his view about the market hitting bottom.
Ethereum and related networks handled more transactions than ever before, showing more people actually using the technology. Companies focused on crypto made more money than many regular stock market sectors.
Stablecoins, digital currencies tied to the dollar, saw big increases. The total value of all stablecoins passed $300 billion in the fourth quarter, reaching a new record high. People moved more stablecoins around, and more money flowed into them throughout 2025.
The growth of decentralized finance completed the picture. Hougan mentioned Uniswap, a trading platform that now handles more transactions than Coinbase on a regular basis.
“That’s the kind of divergence you get at the bottom of bear markets, when sentiment is down but fundamentals are up,” he said.
Bitwise identified several things that could push crypto prices higher in 2026, including movement on the CLARITY Act, more stablecoin growth, a new Federal Reserve chair, and large investment firms giving clients access to crypto funds.
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