Bitwise CIO: Next Bull Run Will Be Slower, Less
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- Matt Hougan, Bitwise's CIO, said the next crypto bull run will be 'slower and less volatile' because Wall Street has 'lost the attention of investors to other hot trends,' most notably AI.
- Bitcoin is down 26% year-to-date and still roughly 50% below its October record high, while the broader CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) has lost 34%.
- Hougan forecast bitcoin could go 'north of $1 million in the next 10 years' but said he has 'less certainty around how, when or if it has bottomed,' pointing to the four-year cycle.
- Registered investment advisors remain deeply engaged with bitcoin, with interest 'as high as it's ever been,' according to Hougan — a signal he called 'very bullish long-term.'
- Stablecoins hit a record combined market value of $322 billion, exceeding the foreign exchange reserves of 95 countries, with Citi projecting the segment could peak at $4 trillion by 2030.
- Stellar's lumen (XLM) gained 8.9% this year, bucking declines across other tokenization-associated blockchains hit by the broader selloff.
- RWA perpetual futures volumes rose 10.4% in May to a new all-time high, reversing a 3.45% drop in combined exchange volumes to $4.41 trillion — the lowest since September 2024.
Why it matters: Crypto's recovery runway just got longer: Wall Street's pivot toward tokenization and AI means the next bull cycle will grind rather than rip, per Hougan, even as the underlying institutional and real-world-asset data tells a different story — stablecoins at a record $322 billion and RWA perpetual futures hitting an all-time high in May while total exchange volumes fell to a 20-month low of $4.41 trillion.
