Michael Saylor, Executive Chairman of Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder On Thursday, X said the crypto winter was over as Bitcoin prices held above $78,000, a price level first reached earlier on April 22, according to CoinDesk data.
In a Game of Thrones-esque image, Thaler wore a fur coat not quite suitable for the end of winter and rode a horse. His company, which recently added 13,927 Bitcoins to bring its total BTC holdings in its vaults to 780,897, said “winter is over,” but not all cryptocurrency analysts agree.
“Even though Bitcoin’s winter is over (which I disagree with), it’s still a very cold winter for altcoins,” said market analyst and AdLunam co-founder Jason Fernandes.
Mati Greenspan, former senior market analyst at eToro and founder of Quantum Economics, believes that what Bitcoin and the broader cryptocurrency market have experienced since the “flash crash” on October 10, which triggered forced liquidations of approximately $19 billion in 24 hours, cannot even be considered a cryptocurrency winter.
“I’m not sure I would accurately classify what we just saw as a crypto winter, it’s more like a sharp pullback in a broader bull market,” Greenspan said.
However, Greenspan agreed with Thaler’s suggestion that Bitcoin has hit a bottom and will likely go higher from here. “Yes, I think we’ve probably hit the bottom,” he said.
Greenspan and other experts said Thaler’s comments and his company’s ongoing Bitcoin purchases indicate that Bitcoin has entered a more permanent era of institutionalization. The new cycle is characterized by market dominance of corporate Bitcoin Treasuries and a shift in institutional sentiment.
nation-state adoption
Even so, institutional adoption is only one piece of the puzzle.
“Yes, increased institutional adoption will kick off the next phase, but what Thaler lacks is nation-state adoption, which is undoubtedly coming,” Greenspan said.
The cryptocurrency founder and market analyst said that the cryptocurrency industry has experienced three different adoption cycles so far.
The first one was driven by early adopters in 2013, he said. Then there was the “mass retail awakening of 2017,” and now it’s institutional adoption in 2021.
“The fourth and final major driver is the adoption of nation-states, which I believe will happen very quickly, especially with the sudden change of direction in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term,” Greenspan said.
“Imagine central banks adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets to maintain price stability, similar to how they added gold in the past,” he added.
In Greenspan’s view, the adoption of nation-states has moved beyond theory and into government balance sheets. For example, under Trump, the United States plans to establish a strategic reserve of Bitcoin, although it has neither been formalized nor operational; the government already holds approximately 300,000 BTC. El Salvador continues its daily buying program, targeting 7,500 Bitcoin for its treasury, while China and the United Kingdom hold approximately 190,000 Bitcoin and 61,000 Bitcoin respectively. Activity is also emerging at the sub-sovereign level, with entities such as Wisconsin and New Jersey introducing Bitcoin exposure in public pension distributions.