Bitcoin’s grinding tape, tamed volatility and repeated, incremental all-time highs usually are not signs of a failed cycle however proof of a market altering palms and altering character, based on Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of firmwide analysis in an interview launched October 23.
Bitcoin Bull Run Gone Quiet: Right here’s Why
The researcher argues that the driving force capping bitcoin’s near-term upside is exogenous—US–China tariff threat—quite than any structural deterioration within the asset’s fundamentals or adoption. “I don’t but assume it’s extra existential than that for the bull market,” he stated, describing the present value motion as “type of crab,” with the market “nonetheless” climbing a wall of fear.
The worth dialogue hinged on two linked observations. First, bitcoin shouldn’t be buying and selling like gold but as a result of “markets transfer on the margins,” and marginal flows nonetheless deal with BTC as threat. Second, these margins are shifting, with passive, long-term allocators steadily absorbing distribution from older cohorts. “Important distribution from previous palms to new palms” has created resistance, he stated, however that course of is “wholesome,” widening possession and maturing the market. He framed a psychological and structural line of demarcation at six figures: “Possibly we delineate there the pre-$100K bitcoin world versus the post-$100K bitcoin world. I feel it’s going to look loads completely different.”
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He contends gold’s conduct helps clarify the current inter-asset divergence. “This nonetheless is the debasement commerce…and it’s the anti-US authorities commerce,” he stated, noting that current gold power has been “all offshore,” with bids arriving “throughout European and Asian hours,” in line with “international central banks and enormous…sovereign wealth funds” diversifying away from US publicity.
In contrast, the bitcoin value is pinned to threat urge for food on the edges of the market. That stated, he expects the asset to converge towards a gold-like profile as possession migrates to establishments: “BlackRock’s chilling the digital gold narrative…Constancy, that is how they speak about it,” he stated, including that as extra provide strikes into the palms of registered funding advisors and passive automobiles, BTC “will…commerce much more like a risk-off, non-sovereign shortage hedge asset.”
The near-term overhang, in his view, is the tariff scare that adopted statements on October 10 about potential 100% levies on China, which “induced” a leverage washout and stalled a robust October. “Fairly merely an abatement of the tariff warfare between the US and China…would type of set us proper again on track in threat markets,” he stated, anticipating a compromise quite than a “protracted bloody commerce warfare.”
Thorn additionally downplayed the subsequent Federal Reserve assembly as a catalyst for bitcoin’s course, whereas acknowledging that with official financial information delayed, the Fed’s personal proprietary datasets might make its communication unusually market-relevant: “They’re going to have information. We don’t have information, however they’ll share the information.”
Galaxy Lowers EOY Bitcoin Worth Prediction
In opposition to that backdrop, he marked down—however didn’t abandon—his year-end targets. “In the beginning of the 12 months, I used to be calling for $150,000 after which $185,000 in This autumn… I’m going to materially draw down that prediction to perhaps like $130,000 by EOY,” he stated.
Thorn described 2025’s path as a gradual, risky stair-step increased—“from like $100k to…$74k to then $126k to now $108l”—with realized volatility declining. As an instance the regime change, host Joe Consorti highlighted a 90-day realized volatility studying close to 29, far beneath the 2017 and 2021 cycle peaks, and summarized the shifting drivers: “It’s extra of a macro commerce than something…shifting a lot additional into…being impacted…by the macro regime.”
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Institutional distribution channels have been a recurring theme. The Galaxy analysis head pointed to wealth-platform entry and custody financial institution initiatives as late-cycle however highly effective accelerants. Thorn cited Morgan Stanley’s transfer to let advisors advocate a small allocation (2-4%) by spot ETFs and stated that three of the 4 largest international custody banks have both launched or introduced digital-asset custody, with one notable holdout.
The implication, he argued, is that the ETF bid and wirehouse adoption are changing the previous, concentrated holder base: “The period of the early bitcoin adopter is now lastly, I feel, totally coming to an finish. And now you’re in…no matter that stage is…that is going to be a extensively owned macro asset in all people’s portfolio.”
NEW EPISODE: Over The Horizon
Alex Thorn (@intangiblecoins) joins me to debate:
– Why markets are so anxious
– Institutional adoption and Bitcoin’s subsequent period
– AI CapEx & classes from the dot-com growth
– The way forward for digital asset treasuries pic.twitter.com/pVuKs3MWJH— Horizon (@JoinHorizon_) October 23, 2025
Macro cross-currents complicate the timing. The AI capital-expenditure growth—he known as it “a very powerful development in markets”—is both nearing a speculative blow-off or, in a extra geopolitical framing, simply coming into a Manhattan Challenge–fashion national-priority part. If the latter proves right, the knock-on results for liquidity, charges, power and semiconductors might be bigger and longer-lived than typical tech cycles.
However for bitcoin particularly, he saved coming again to tariffs because the decisive near-term swing issue and to microstructure as the rationale the chart feels each heavier and sturdier than previous cycles: a passive ETF bid absorbing OG provide at psychologically important spherical numbers, with out the “huge uplifts” that when adopted recent all-time highs.
The bottom case he outlined shouldn’t be euphoria however endurance. Or, as he put it extra bluntly earlier within the dialog, the bull run hasn’t died—“it’s evolving.”
At press time, BTC traded at $111,183.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
