Bitwise CIO: Next Crypto Bull Run Will Be Slower, Less Volatile

Bitwise’s CIO Matt Hougan told CoinDesk this week that the next crypto bull run will be slower and less volatile, with Wall Street now chasing tokenization and AI instead. The forecast comes from a lifelong BTC bull who still expects the asset to clear $1 million within the decade, even as he warns the recovery from bitcoin’s October 2025 record will take longer and produce fewer fireworks than the 2017 and 2021 cycles.

The data Hougan is reading has been visible for months. Bitcoin is down 26% this year, the broader CoinDesk 20 Index has lost 34%, and one BTC was priced at $63,902.35 in the same market quote Hougan shared. At the same time, the stablecoin market has climbed to a record $322 billion, Citi is forecasting a $4 trillion ceiling by 2030, and one of the year’s best-performing large-cap tokens belongs to Stellar, a blockchain built for tokenized assets.

The Bitwise CIO Forecasts a Slower, Less Volatile Cycle

Hougan’s call frames the next cycle as a different kind of bull market: slower and less volatile than the past two cycles. The defining feature of the 2017 and 2021 cycles was a vertical move. Bitcoin ran from under $1,000 in early 2017 to nearly $20,000 by December that year, then from roughly $10,000 in March 2020 to a peak near $69,000 in late 2021. The new cycle, Hougan argues, will trade more like a slow-grind equity rally than a 4-year-cycle blow-off top.

The reason is what Wall Street is no longer paying attention to. Hougan, in emailed comments reported by CoinDesk, said crypto has “lost the attention of investors to other hot trends,” with AI the dominant pull on institutional mindshare for now. He still calls the long-term RIA interest in bitcoin and crypto a “very bullish long-term signal” and reaffirmed his Bitwise CIO’s slower, less volatile forecast, in which BTC still clears $1 million within a decade.

The bullish call and the slower-cycle call are not, in Hougan’s framing, in conflict. He agrees with bitcoin maximalists that the AI attention shift is “at least contributing to the drop” in BTC and is “likely to slow any recovery.” His read is that bear markets make it easier for sidelined capital to “reach for something tangible.” Stablecoins and tokenized assets feel more “real-world” to most investors than BTC does, in his telling. The change is in the shape of the recovery, not its destination.

Bitcoin Now Sits 50% Below Its October Peak

Bitcoin’s price chart has done the slowing for Hougan. The asset peaked at about $126,000 in October 2025, and it remains almost 50% below that record. As of mid-June 2026, BTC trades around $63,900, in a recovery that masks a sharp altcoin split. The price had touched a Bitcoin’s 16% weekly drop to a 17-month low of $59,099.25 in early June.

The selling has been broad. The CoinDesk 20 Index, a gauge of the wider crypto market, has lost 34% this year. Spot bitcoin ETFs, the institutional on-ramp of the last cycle, logged 13 straight sessions of outflows in late May and early June, the longest streak on record, with combined net assets falling to $80.4 billion from $107.8 billion on May 14. The selling eased only on a single $3 million net inflow day in early June. Even so, the institutional vehicles that powered the last cycle are still bleeding.

• Bitcoin YTD return: -26%
• CoinDesk 20 Index YTD: -34%
• Bitcoin vs. October 2025 peak of about $126,000: -50%
• Stablecoin market cap: $322 billion (record high)
• Citi 2030 stablecoin forecast (bull case): $4 trillion

Capital Is Rotating Into Tokenization and Stablecoins

The rotation Hougan describes is already visible in the price tape. The CoinDesk story notes that blockchains associated with tokenization, including Stellar, “have also been hit” this year, yet Stellar’s XLM “stands out with a gain of 8.9% this year.” Most of the year-to-date drawdown is concentrated in tokens without a clear real-world-asset angle. That pattern is what Hougan is calling the rotation.

Stablecoins are the other end of the rotation. The combined market value of the tokens, pegged to assets like the US dollar, recently hit a record $322 billion, a figure that the CoinDesk story notes is more than the foreign exchange reserves of 95 countries.

For the parts of crypto that have stayed close to “tangible” financial plumbing, the cycle is already working. On Stellar, the on-chain activity is concentrated in tokenized real-world assets. On the stablecoin side, the $322 billion record is the kind of figure that would have led the news in a bull market.

• Stellar (XLM): up 8.9% YTD, the standout among tokenization-linked chains
• Stablecoin market cap: $322 billion, a record high in June 2026
• Citi 2030 forecast for stablecoin issuance: up to $4 trillion in the bull case

Wall Street’s Tokenized Rails Already Outrun Stablecoins

The largest tokenizers in 2026 are banks. Tokenized deposits issued by JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and a small group of incumbents run on permissioned ledgers. Per industry reporting on McKinsey data, institutional tokenized deposit networks are on track to facilitate more than $4 trillion in annual transaction volume in 2026, against an estimated $400 billion for stablecoin payment activity in 2025. The public stablecoin market handles roughly an order of magnitude less volume than the bank-led tokenized deposit networks do. Most of that bank-led volume is invisible to retail crypto traders.

Banks have moved first because they have a balance sheet to defend. A tokenized deposit updates the form factor of a traditional bank account by placing deposit liabilities on blockchain rails, which lets corporate clients keep their deposit relationship with a regulated bank while gaining the programmability of a smart contract. The trend has produced deals like the Bullish exchange’s $4.2 billion push to acquire Equiniti, the transfer agent at the center of tokenized securities. JPMorgan’s Kinexys, the largest single instance, is estimated to process more than $1 trillion annually for internal corporate treasury movements and cross-border intercompany settlements.

The volumes dwarf the public stablecoin market, but most of it happens on permissioned ledgers. A tokenized dollar on one bank’s chain cannot natively interact with a contract on a competitor’s, and the public-facing stablecoin duopoly, with Tether and Circle controlling more than 80% of circulating supply and USDT alone near 59%, still dominates the parts of digital dollars that retail and crypto traders can see. The bank tokenization wave is the silent counterpart to the bull case Hougan is selling: the same institutions not chasing bitcoin are the ones embedding blockchain rails at the level of their own deposits.

Why the Bitcoin-Equity Correlation Has Broken

The mechanism behind the rotation is the decoupling of bitcoin from the equity rally. For most of the past year, BTC traded in lockstep with the Nasdaq and the S&P 500, a near-perfect positive correlation that let it function as a high-beta proxy for AI-driven tech, but that relationship has collapsed over the last several weeks.

While global equities, particularly tech stocks, continued to reach new all-time highs, bitcoin has failed to track the same upward price trend.

Global equities, particularly tech stocks, hit fresh all-time highs over the same window. The proximate cause is the AI trade itself, with speculators “going all-in on AI stocks and memory chips, especially in Korea,” Charles-Henry Monchau, chief investment officer at Syz Group, told CNBC. The same hot money that would historically have rotated into BTC and the wider altcoin complex has, this cycle, gone into the chip and AI infrastructure complex, into the SpaceX IPO trade, and into any number of “monster IPOs” that the market expects to divert retail dollars through the second half of 2026. Crypto no longer has the only on-ramp for retail’s speculative dollars.

Advisor Allocations Hit a Record While Bitcoin Lags

The contradiction in the Hougan call is the one he is most comfortable with. RIAs, the firms that allocate capital on behalf of high-net-worth individuals and institutions in the US, are still leaning in. Hougan said RIA interest in bitcoin and crypto overall “is as high as it’s ever been,” a stance that lines up with the latest Bitwise/VettaFi 2026 Benchmark Survey, which found that 32% of financial advisors allocated to crypto in client accounts in 2025, up from 22% in 2024. The same survey found that 56% of advisors owned crypto in their personal portfolios, the highest level since the survey began. The capital is committed.

That demand has not translated into a bid. Bitcoin ETFs bled for 13 straight sessions, and BTC briefly traded at the level it sat at before the 2024 US presidential election, the kind of price action that usually triggers a leveraged washout. The bull case is being held by the people writing the cheques, even as the price action is being driven by the people chasing the AI complex.

Some of the more optimistic observers see the divergence as a setup. Strive chief executive Matt Cole told CNBC that bitcoin’s fundamentals have “never been better” and that the 200-week moving average has marked the perfect dip-buying level on each of the four prior tests. Hougan’s own long-term call, that BTC goes “north of $1 million in the next 10 years,” is the same bet restated. The new cycle trades patience for verticality: instead of waiting for a blow-off top, traders wait for the AI trade to exhaust.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will there be another crypto bull run?

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan expects one, but he told CoinDesk it will be slower and less volatile than the 2017 and 2021 cycles. His long-term forecast still calls for bitcoin to clear $1 million within the next ten years, even as he warns the recovery from the current drawdown will take longer than traders have come to expect.

Why is bitcoin losing to AI stocks?

The capital is being pulled into AI infrastructure, memory chips, and a wave of “monster IPOs,” with the 30-day correlation between bitcoin and the Nasdaq and S&P 500 collapsing over recent weeks as global equities hit new highs, according to Charles-Henry Monchau, chief investment officer at Syz Group.

Is the $1 million bitcoin target still realistic?

Hougan has not changed the long-term call. He told CoinDesk he still expects bitcoin to clear $1 million within ten years, even as he acknowledged in the same interview that he is less certain whether BTC has bottomed or how the four-year cycle will resolve.

What is tokenization in crypto?

Tokenization is the process of placing a representation of a real-world asset, such as a bond, a fund share, or a bank deposit, onto a blockchain ledger. The CoinDesk story highlights Stellar as a chain built around this use case. XLM is up 8.9% year to date while most tokenization-linked chains have been hit in the 2026 drawdown.

How big is the stablecoin market now?

The combined market value of stablecoins reached a record $322 billion as of June 2026, with Citi’s updated forecast now putting a $4 trillion peak on the market by 2030 in its bull case.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Crypto assets are volatile and may result in total loss. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Figures cited are accurate as of June 18, 2026. Consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.