Bitwise’s Matt Hougan Says Crypto Bottomed in June, Expects a Good End to 2026

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer (CIO) of crypto asset manager Bitwise, said the crypto market has already put in its low for this cycle.
“I think we bottomed in June,” Hougan said on Unchained in an episode taped live on Monday, Nov. 9. He added that he thinks the market is “in the early stages of a multi-year bull market,” pointing to how crypto held up through the Democratic sweep of Congress, high inflation readings and rising expectations of a Federal Reserve rate hike. “One definition of an early bull market is when bad news stops mattering,” he said.
That is a firmer call than the one Hougan made over the summer. In June, he told CoinDesk that “I have less certainty around how, when or if it has bottomed,” and in a July 1 memo he wrote that he thought the market was “nearing the bottom.” Galaxy’s head of firmwide research, Alex Thorn, argued on Unchained in late October that bitcoin bottomed in late June.

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Uncertainty Before Year-End
Hougan was more guarded about the near term. He said he is “a little bit pessimistic for the next few weeks,” citing uncertainty over how Democrats will approach crypto once they take control of Congress. His outlook: “maybe a few weeks of uncertainty, and then I think a good end of the year.”
On Tuesday, a day after the taping, bitcoin fell below $74,000 after the October consumer price index (CPI) came in a tenth of a percentage point above forecasts. BTC traded near $73,300 at 18:08 UTC, according to CoinGecko, about 42% below its all-time high of $126,080 set on Oct. 6, 2025. Bitwise wrote on Oct. 28 that bitcoin fell more than 50% from that peak before bottoming below $59,000 in June.
Asked how a burst AI bubble could hit crypto, Hougan said the only AI scenario in which bitcoin doesn’t win is “a sharp recession and no government response to it.” In that case, he said, “that’s the scenario that could push us below the June lows,” adding that he considers it unlikely.
The $1.6 Million Forecast
Hougan also walked through Bitwise’s forecast that bitcoin will reach $1.6 million by 2036, which the firm published in its annual long-term outlook last month. On air, he described a store-of-value market of about $30 trillion, counting bitcoin and gold, that he said has grown 13% a year and could reach roughly $90 trillion in a decade, with bitcoin’s share climbing from about 5% to 25%.
He put Bitwise’s expected annual return for bitcoin well above the 10% base case JPMorgan Asset Management set in October. “We’re closer to 30,” he said. Bitwise’s published report, which starts from a $31 trillion store-of-value market, puts the compound annual growth rate at 34.3% and the market’s size in 10 years at $110 trillion.
Hougan said he expects the debasement trade, the bet that mounting government debt erodes fiat currencies and lifts scarce assets, to “be back in sort of full force” in 2027.
Related Listen: Bitcoin’s Price May Have Bottomed. One Reason Is the AI Debasement Trade

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