0x1carus

Where We've Been

From March to October 2023, Bitcoin traded in a frustrating range between $27,000 and $30,000. If you'd been trying to catch a breakout during those months, you probably lost money or patience or both. There were occasional bright spots—PEPE had its moment, Friend Tech generated some buzz, Telegram bots provided entertainment—but nothing felt like real momentum. The macro conversation was all about rate hikes and soft landings, and crypto seemed stuck waiting for permission to move.

Looking back, the bear market probably ended around March 2023 when Bitcoin ripped from $20,000 to $28,000 in just a couple weeks. FTX was finally getting put behind us, the mainstream media had mostly exhausted their crypto hit pieces, and there was finally enough price action to wake people up. That feels like ancient history now, even though it was only about a year ago.

Now we're in a different world. Bitcoin is trading above $56,000. Ethereum's all-time high is within striking distance. Alts are moving fast. And if you've been paying attention to private markets, valuations have completely disconnected from any traditional sense of reason. It would be easy to look at all this and conclude we're in the late innings.

I think that's the wrong read.

The ETF Changes Everything

The spot Bitcoin ETFs represent something genuinely new. For the first time, there's a clean, regulated, accessible liquidity pipeline between traditional finance and crypto. This isn't about institutions secretly being here—they've been here since last cycle. This is about removing every friction point that kept mainstream capital on the sidelines.

Larry Fink put BlackRock's reputation on the line for this. While financial media and traditional advisors looked at him with a mix of confusion and alarm, he pushed forward anyway. Now Fidelity is recommending 1-3% portfolio allocations to crypto as a "safe and responsible investment." These aren't crypto-native funds talking their book. These are the largest asset managers in the world telling their clients that digital assets belong in a diversified portfolio.

When was the last time an entirely new asset class got this kind of institutional on-ramp? Probably gold ETFs, which launched about 20 years ago. If you look up how gold performed in the years following that launch, the pattern is instructive. Persistent inflows meeting limited supply tends to create sustained price appreciation that lasts longer than people expect.

It's difficult to model ETF inflows accurately because this situation is genuinely unprecedented. Every day seems to bring new records. The demand side looks insatiable, and the supply side wasn't prepared for this. That imbalance doesn't resolve quickly.

The Space Has Actually Matured

People love pointing out how many of the top 10 coins from previous cycles have faded into irrelevance. "Look at all these dead projects," they say, as if this proves crypto is fundamentally unserious. But turnover at the top happens in every competitive market. Go look at the top 10 stocks by market cap in 2000 versus today—there's been massive change there too. That's not a sign of dysfunction; it's a sign of a healthy, competitive ecosystem where better projects displace worse ones.

The difference with crypto is the speed. What takes decades in traditional markets happens in years here. An industry that started as a white paper from an anonymous person has morphed into a technological phenomenon capable of disrupting global finance. The pace of iteration is unlike anything we've seen before.

And the quality of what's being built has improved meaningfully. There are more sophisticated market makers providing liquidity. There are more crypto-native funds with actual expertise. The recent batch of project raises are more legitimate than anything from previous cycles—real teams, real technology, real traction. It almost feels like crypto is slowly becoming a legitimate asset class right before our eyes.

Where's the Euphoria?

I keep looking for signs of peak froth and not finding them. Think back to the top of the last cycle. Tokens called Dogelon Mars and BabyCare were trending. SafeMoon was separating retail from their money at scale. Every other project was a dog coin or a food token or both. The scam-to-substance ratio was off the charts, and everyone knew it but nobody cared because number was going up.

I don't see anything like that today. Yes, there are memecoins. Yes, speculation is rampant in certain corners. But the overall composition of what's capturing attention and capital feels more legitimate than it did in 2021. The infrastructure being built—restaking protocols, intent-based systems, modular blockchains—is actual technology solving actual problems. That's different from aping into a token with a dog wearing a spacesuit.

When the truly unhinged projects start dominating timelines and capturing mainstream attention, that's usually a sign we're getting close to the end. We're not there yet.

The Numbers Game

Bitcoin did over 20x in 2017. It did roughly 10x from the March 2020 lows before double-topping. If Bitcoin were to do a 10x from its November 2022 lows, the peak would be around $160,000.

The obvious pushback is that market cap was smaller back then, so percentage moves were easier. That's true. But it doesn't mean large moves are impossible—just that they require more capital. And the ETFs are providing exactly that: a new source of persistent, large-scale buying pressure that didn't exist in previous cycles.

We're also operating in a world that's getting weirder by the day. AI is advancing faster than almost anyone predicted. Sam Altman is trying to raise trillions of dollars to prepare humanity for AGI. The US printed an unprecedented amount of money during the pandemic, and those chickens are still coming home to roost. Traditional assumptions about what's possible keep getting shattered.

In that context, is $160,000 Bitcoin really so outlandish? What about $200,000? The ceiling keeps rising because the world keeps changing in ways that make hard assets and digital scarcity more relevant, not less.

The Bear Market Hangover

The 2022 bear market broke a lot of people psychologically. Months of downward grinding, followed by the FTX implosion, left survivors with a deep skepticism of any good news. That conditioning doesn't disappear overnight. It manifests as reflexive caution, as calling tops too early, as mistaking exhaustion for wisdom.

I see this everywhere on my timeline. Smart people who should know better talking about late innings when we haven't even broken all-time highs yet. Analysis that starts from the assumption that things can't possibly continue, because the bear market trained everyone to expect disappointment.

But markets don't care about our psychological scars. They do what they do. And right now, the setup looks more bullish than most people want to admit.

What Could Go Wrong

This isn't a call for reckless leverage or ignoring risk management. Plenty could derail things: regulatory crackdowns, macroeconomic shocks, black swan events we can't predict. The crypto market has a way of punishing hubris right when you least expect it.

It's also possible that we're further along than I think. Maybe the ETF inflows are already priced in. Maybe the lack of obvious euphoria is itself a sign that we've matured past the need for manic blow-off tops. Markets evolve, and the patterns from previous cycles aren't guaranteed to repeat.

But when I weigh the evidence—the ETF demand, the improving fundamentals, the lack of mania indicators, the macro backdrop—I keep coming back to the same conclusion. It feels too early to be defensive. The uncomfortable position is often the correct one, and right now, staying bullish feels uncomfortable because the bear market trained us to expect pain around every corner.

The Takeaway

I'm not predicting a supercycle or claiming we'll never have another drawdown. Corrections happen, and they can be vicious. What I am saying is that the reflexive doomerism I see on timelines doesn't match the evidence in front of us. We have new demand sources that didn't exist before, infrastructure that's better than it's ever been, and a global financial system that keeps giving people reasons to look for alternatives.

The people sitting this out because it "feels late" might be right. But they also might be making the same mistake everyone makes after a brutal bear—letting past pain blind them to present opportunity. Being wrong while positioned is frustrating. Being wrong while on the sidelines is devastating.

Don't be afraid to dream a little bigger.