The Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) price trades near $64,800 today, roughly 49% below the record it set last October. Bitcoin briefly dropped below $60K in late June, closing at a low of $58,566 on June 30, which is its lowest in almost two years.
With Bitcoin swinging between $58,000 and $65,000 over the past six weeks, many are asking if this is the bottom or if there’s another leg lower.
Standard Chartered and ARK Say Bitcoin Already Hit Its Low
Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick, said on June 12 that Bitcoin had already bottomed at $59,000, which is 53% below the October record. He wrote that “winter is over” and it was time to “welcome back to crypto Spring.”
Bitcoin had fallen to around $59,000 in the days before he wrote, so Kendrick was pointing at a low the market had just made rather than a level he had calculated. He had been far more bearish in February, warning of capitulation and cutting his near-term Bitcoin target to $50,000.
What changed his mind was SpaceX’s $75 billion Nasdaq debut on the same day. Kendrick argued that most of the $5.72 billion pulled out of spot Bitcoin ETFs since mid-May was investors freeing up cash for that listing rather than giving up on crypto, so the selling should stop once the IPO was done. However, Bitcoin kept falling after he published, closing June down 20.48% and finishing June 30 at $58,566, just below the floor he said would hold.
Kendrick also named three things that would confirm the call, which were ETF inflows returning, corporate treasuries buying again, and oil prices falling. All three happened in June. Spot Bitcoin ETFs have not had a single day of net outflows in August, and oil dropped toward $80 a barrel after the US-Iran peace deal. The corporate buying has since reversed, though, with Strategy selling 1,638 Bitcoin in late July.
Kendrick is not alone in thinking the low is in. ARK Invest’s Cathie Wood says Bitcoin “seems to be in a bottoming process” and will “resume the very volatile but broad uptrend,” and her evidence is the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio, which measures how much gold one Bitcoin buys. That ratio steadied even while gold weakened, which tells her Bitcoin has stopped losing ground against the asset investors run to when they get nervous.
Galaxy Research Sees Bitcoin’s Low Between $40,000 and $46,000
Alex Thorn, Galaxy Research’s head of firmwide research, published a cycle study the same day Kendrick called the bottom and reached the opposite conclusion. Galaxy went back through every Bitcoin cycle top and bottom on record and found that only four of the 13 signals that marked previous bottoms had shown up this time.
The dates were the other problem, because past Bitcoin lows came 12 to 13 months after each cycle top, and the market was only eight months past its October peak when the study went out. Galaxy therefore expects the Bitcoin bottom in the fourth quarter of 2026.
For the price, Galaxy works from Bitcoin’s realized price, which is what the average Bitcoin was last bought or sold for, and that figure is $53,600 today. Bitcoin has historically bottomed at or just below that level, so Galaxy forecasts a Bitcoin bottom of $40,000 to $46,000, with a deeper selloff taking it to $30,000 to $37,000 and a milder one ending near $51,000 to $54,000. Even that mildest scenario is 17% below where Bitcoin trades now.
Galaxy also warns that its own estimate could fall further. In a panic, the firm says, holders sell at a loss and drag the realized price down with them, and a 10% to 30% drop there would pull the forecast from around $40,000 toward $28,000.
Polymarket traders have been pricing something close to Galaxy’s range, putting the odds of Bitcoin reaching $45,000 in 2026 at 40% and $40,000 at 32%, against 30% for a run to $90,000.
What Crypto Analysts Say About the Bitcoin Bottom
Crypto analysts who work from Bitcoin’s own network data expect the bottom in the fourth quarter. Benjamin Cowen, who runs the Into The Cryptoverse research platform, expects it in late September or early October based on where the low fell after previous halvings. Meanwhile, CryptoQuant’s models point to September through November, and veteran trader Peter Brandt has named an investable low around October 4.
However, looking at Glassnode’s data explains why none of them think it has happened yet. Its cycle heatmap has 45 Bitcoin metrics in capitulation, which means holders are selling at a loss instead of waiting it out, and Bitcoin has been in that state longer than at any point since the FTX collapse in 2022. Bottoms form once everyone willing to sell at a loss has already sold, since that leaves nobody to push the Bitcoin price lower.
While all that plays out, two price levels are worth knowing. The Bitcoin price would have to reclaim about $69,007 to put everyone who bought in the past six months back into profit. On the downside, $53,600 is what the average Bitcoin was last bought for, and a drop below that would leave the average holder at a loss.
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