Bitcoin’s grinding tape, tamed volatility and repeated, incremental all-time highs are not symptoms of a failed cycle, but evidence of a market changing hands and character, said Alex Thorn, head of Galaxy’s research at Firmwide in an interview released on October 23.
Bitcoin Bull Run Has Gone Silent: Here’s Why
The researcher argues that the driving force behind bitcoin’s short-term uptrend is exogenous (US-China tariff risk) and not a structural deterioration in the asset’s fundamentals or adoption. “I don’t think it’s more existential than that for the bull market yet,” he said, describing the current price action as “kind of a crab” as the market is “still” climbing a wall of worry.
The price discussion revolved around two interconnected observations. First, Bitcoin does not yet trade like gold because “markets move along the margins,” and marginal flows still view BTC as risk. Second, those margins are shifting, with passive long-term allocators steadily absorbing the payouts from older cohorts. “Significant distribution from old to new hands” has created resistance, he said, but that process is “healthy,” increasing ownership and maturing the market. He outlined a psychological and structural dividing line at six figures: “Maybe that’s where we’re painting the pre-$100,000 bitcoin world versus the post-$100,000 bitcoin world. I think it’s going to look very different.”
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He claims that gold’s behavior helps explain the current differences between assets. “This is still the demeaning trade… and it is the anti-US government trade,” he said, noting that recent gold strength has been “all offshore,” with bids coming in “during European and Asian hours,” in line with “foreign central banks and large… sovereign wealth funds” diversifying away from US exposure.
In contrast, the bitcoin price is pegged to risk appetite at the edges of the market. That said, he expects the asset to converge to a gold-like profile as ownership migrates to institutions: “BlackRock is cooling the digital gold story… Fidelity, this is how they talk about it,” he said, adding that as more supply gets into the hands of registered investment advisors and passive vehicles, BTC “will trade much more like a risky, non-sovereign scarcity hedge assets.”
The near-term overhang, he said, is the tariff scare that followed Oct. 10 statements about possible 100% tariffs on China, which “caused” a debt runoff and brought a strong October to a halt. “Quite simply, a reduction in the US-China tariff war could put us back on track in risk markets,” he said, anticipating a compromise rather than a “protracted bloody trade war.”
Thorn also downplayed the next Federal Reserve meeting as a catalyst for Bitcoin’s price, while acknowledging that with delayed official economic data, the Fed’s own data sets could make its communications unusually market relevant: “They will have data. We don’t have data, but they will share the data.”
Galaxy Lowers EOY Bitcoin Price Prediction
Against that backdrop, he has scaled back his year-end targets – but not given up. “At the beginning of the year I was calling for $150,000 and then $185,000 in the fourth quarter… I’m going to cut that forecast substantially to perhaps $130,000 per EOY,” he said.
Thorn described the path to 2025 as a slow, volatile climb – “from about $100,000 to…$74,000 to then $126,000 to now $108l” – with realized volatility declining. To illustrate the regime change, host Joe Consorti highlighted a 90-day realized volatility reading around 29, well below the cycle peaks of 2017 and 2021, and summarized the changing factors: “It’s more of a macro trade than anything… much further in the direction of… being influenced… by the macro regime.”
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Institutional distribution channels were a recurring theme. Galaxy’s research head pointed to initiatives on access to asset platforms and custodian banks as late-cycle but powerful accelerators. Thorn cited Morgan Stanley’s move to let advisors recommend a small allocation (2-4%) through spot ETFs and said three of the four largest global custodian banks have launched or announced digital asset custody, with one notable exclusion.
The implication, he argued, is that the ETF bid and wirehouse adoption are replacing the old, concentrated base of holders: “The era of early bitcoin adopters is now finally, I think, coming to a complete end. And now you’re in… whatever that phase is… this is going to be a macro asset in everyone’s portfolio.”
NEW EPISODE: Over the horizon 🎙️
Alex Doorn (@intangible coins) joins me to discuss:
– Why the markets are so fearful
– Institutional Adoption and the Next Era of Bitcoin
– AI CapEx and lessons from the dot-com boom
– The future of digital asset treasuries pic.twitter.com/pVuKs3MWJH— Horizon (@JoinHorizon_) October 23, 2025
Macro crosscurrents complicate timing. The boom in AI capital spending – he called it “the most important trend in the markets” – is nearing a speculative breakout or, in a more geopolitical framework, just beginning a Manhattan Project-style phase of national priority. If the latter proves true, the knock-on effects for liquidity, interest rates, energy and semiconductors could be larger and longer-lived than typical technology cycles.
But for Bitcoin specifically, he kept coming back to rates as the decisive short-term swing factor, and to microstructure as the reason the chart feels both heavier and more solid than previous cycles: a passive ETF bid that absorbs OG’s offering with psychologically significant round numbers, without the “huge rises” that once followed new all-time highs.
The basic scenario he outlined is not euphoria, but endurance. Or, as he bluntly put it earlier in the conversation, the bull run isn’t extinct yet – “it’s evolving.”
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $111,183.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com