HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 30: Michael Terpin.
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“$BTC lower highs and lower lows. $50K is just a matter of time,” crypto account Web3Marmot posted on X this week, drawing more than a thousand likes as bitcoin consolidated around $76,000. Not everyone sees a fakeout. Some of the loudest voices on X are still calling for a final run to $215,000 before the bear. Michael Terpin, the early-stage crypto investor CNBC once dubbed “the godfather of crypto,” sits in the first camp and has a harder floor in mind. His call, delivered on my podcast On The Margin: the 2025 cycle top is already behind us, and the bottom lands in October 2026 around the 200-week moving average at roughly $57,000.
A ‘godfather of crypto’ calls the top
Terpin, founder and CEO of Transform Group and Transform Ventures, has been trading bitcoin cycles since 2013. His thesis, which he lays out in a book framing bitcoin’s price action as four seasons, hinges on timing. “We have been following the four-year cycle unbelievably well,” Terpin told me, “and yet every bear market there’s still, seems like the majority of pundits say the cycle is broken.”
Cycle tops and bottoms, in his model, sit roughly twelve months apart. “Bitcoin fall starts the day that the bubble pops and ends the day of capitulation,” Terpin said. The 2021 top preceded FTX’s implosion by almost exactly one year. The 2017 top preceded its low by three days short of a year. The 2013 top preceded its low by a year and two weeks. “We’re midway into Bitcoin fall,” he said. “We popped the bubble in early October. Yeah, so October” is when he expects the bottom to arrive.
Terpin’s price target is framed around a specific indicator. “You wait until you see something approaching the bottom, which has historically been when you get under the 200-week moving average,” he said. “Every single time it’s erased the froth of the entire four year period. So that average right now is about 57K.”
Why the ETF cycle underperformed
The post-halving pump that was supposed to carry bitcoin higher in 2025 did not deliver the returns Terpin had projected. “I was expecting it to be about three X to having. We didn’t even make that. We made two X,” he said. “That was definitely bad macro because most people expected good macro, tailwinds instead of headwinds because he had Trump as president.”
Terpin’s framing of the headwind is direct. “What they didn’t realize about Trump was, yeah, he talks a good game on crypto, but he still didn’t get any laws passed, the Clarity Act is still not passed. And most importantly, he scared the bejesus out of the world with all the tariff talk.”
The cycle math lines up with what other bears are flagging. “Bitcoin’s 4-year halving cycle points to a bear market bottom in late 2026, most analysts target Q3/Q4 after the 2025 ~$126K top,” crypto cycle tracker @Natn4t01 posted on X this week. “Historical drawdowns of 70-80% suggest support in the $60K-$75K zone.” That puts @Natn4t01 within a few thousand dollars of Terpin’s 200-week-moving-average read.
Not everyone is convinced
The pushback comes from quants who argue 2026 will not rhyme with 2022 because institutional flows look nothing like they did then. “For anyone who thinks 2026 is preordained and predestined to be a bear market,” on-chain analyst @TheRealPlanC posted on April 21, “Strategy is on pace to buy 60x more Bitcoin in 2026 than they did in 2022. This time is different. Recovery in 2026. Year-end between $90k and $130k. True cycle peak in 2027.”
Strategy, the Michael Saylor vehicle formerly known as MicroStrategy, recently overtook BlackRock’s IBIT as the largest single holder of bitcoin at roughly 815,000 coins. That is the bull’s strongest counter to the four-seasons model: cycles assume the marginal holder eventually sells, and Strategy’s debt-funded accumulation is explicitly designed not to.
What watchers say
Shorter-term traders see a more muted pullback before any deeper leg down. “Expected Low: April 20–25, 72K–74K. Expected High: May 5–15, 78K–88K. Structure remains bullish above 72K–74K,” trader @TheDonH91 posted on April 20. That range straddles the current $75K–$76K consolidation and sits well above Terpin’s October target.
Terpin, for his part, is not interested in fighting the chop. “Dollar cost averaging works three years out of four. It does not work if you start averaging out from the bubble popping on down because you’re just buying into lower lows,” he said. “Hold your cash, if you’re going to buy it in bitcoin, just hold more cash.”
The signal Terpin is waiting for
Terpin’s signal for re-entry is not a specific price. It is public panic. “Jim Cramer comes on TV again and says, I beg you, I plead with you, sell your bitcoin before it’s zero like you did four years ago. It’s a lousy investment. Then that’s probably a good time to start buying back in.” Whales, he said, tend to buy back about four to six weeks after the bottom, and they confirm it on-chain. Until then, his bitcoin price prediction for 2026 is unchanged: the cycle top is in, and $57,000 is the number to wait for.
