Calling the bottom of anything is a reliable way to look silly later. Doing it with Bitcoin (BTC +0.61%) is that, plus a live audience. Coinbase (COIN -3.32%) CEO Brian Armstrong did it anyway in a Bloomberg video last month, saying, "I personally think we've seen the bottom of the Bitcoin price in this cycle."
Armstrong has made this argument before, but he's sticking to it despite a volatile summer. He also said that about half of Coinbase's revenues come from trading volume. In other words, Armstrong isn't exactly a neutral observer.
I'm mostly on board, though. It would just be hard to claim a definitive market trough with a straight face in front of the camera, and I'd attach a "bumpy road" sticker to the whole idea.
CRYPTO: BTC
Key Data Points
The scoreboard
Weekly closes from CoinMarketCap tell Armstrong's story. Bitcoin peaked near $124,800 on Oct. 6, 2025, then slid to about $60,100 by June 29, 2026. That's a 51.8% drop, which qualifies as a technical bear market for old-school stocks. All you need for that moniker is a 20% drawdown from recent peaks.
As of Oct. 2, Bitcoin is back to roughly $85,200, up 41.6% from June's low.
Here's the thing, though: Bitcoin's last three cycle crashes were deeper: 79.9%, 81.9%, and 76.6%. By that standard, a 51.8% decline is practically a gentle correction.
What's different this time
The buyer base has also changed. According to Bitbo data, U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products held about 1.29 million BTC, worth roughly $109.3 billion, as of Oct. 2.
That is about 6.1% of Bitcoin's maximum supply of 21 million coins. None of those funds existed at any of the three prior troughs, and neither did the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
Why I'm not committed to Armstrong's market bottom
Timing is the weak point. Each of the three earlier troughs arrived 924 to 999 days after a halving. Bitcoin is now 895 days past the April 2024 halving, so the next window should open around Halloween and run into mid-January 2027. Assuming that the patterns of the three earlier cycles hold firm once again, that is. Three complete cycles are a small sample.
For the first time, Bitcoin set a record high before a halving, hitting about $72,100 in March 2024 as investors digested the new Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. The cyclical patterns can look clear when I play around with different four-year charts, but the market is always in flux.
Image source: Getty Images.
The bottom is a neighborhood, not a street address
So here's my version. The bottom is probably a zone, roughly $60,000 to $66,000, rather than a single day. Armstrong may well be right about the general neighborhood, and the timing could still wobble.
What keeps me interested over the long haul isn't a chart of daily Bitcoin prices. It's a fixed max supply of 21 million coins and a steadily growing crowd of institutional buyers.
I think Bitcoin is going places, and the worst of the dips should largely be behind it. Just pack a reliable seat belt, because the road ahead is full of potholes. Some could be deep enough to revisit June's lows.
