Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, published a blog post this week arguing that early signs of a market bottom are showing up in Bitcoin data, though he stopped short of calling the bear market finished. The crypto market has been under heavy pressure since October 2025, and Hougan's read is that the worst is close to over, not necessarily behind us.
What the data is showing right now
Three signals caught Hougan's attention. Bitcoin has been climbing since early July. Spot Bitcoin ETF inflows have turned positive again after a prolonged dry spell. And retail sentiment, battered for months, has started to recover. He treats these as bottoming indicators, not as confirmation of a new uptrend. The distinction matters: he explicitly said it is too early to declare the bear market completely over.
Still, the direction is clear enough for Hougan to start mapping what comes next.
Where Bitwise sees the next cycle coming from
Hougan's thesis is that the next bull market will not look like the last two. Previous cycles ran on speculation and narrative. This one, he argues, will be anchored in actual revenue, real use cases, and the structural merger of crypto rails with traditional finance.
He split the opportunity into two groups. The first covers crypto-native protocols that already generate real income. Hyperliquid (HYPE) is his headline example, a decentralized derivatives platform that Hougan described as still reasonably valued even if the price doubled from here. He also named Uniswap (UNI), Aave (AAVE), and Morpho (MORPHO) as altcoins likely to benefit as more projects adopt similar token economies tied to actual cash flows.
The second group is publicly traded financial companies building crypto infrastructure into their core products. Robinhood (HOOD) is the clearest case, a firm already running 24-hour trading and pushing into instant payments and tokenization. Hougan sees companies like it as the bridge between Wall Street and on-chain finance, and thinks that bridge is where a lot of the next cycle's gains will be concentrated.
Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and institutional DeFi round out the themes he expects to drive volume and valuations once the cycle turns.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
