Bitcoin’s Next Bull Run Has One Big Problem

The episode argues that Bitcoin’s next move is unusually hard to read because the market is being pulled in opposite directions. On one side, Jason Calcanis is calling for a brutal year and a retest of the June low near $57,000, backed by the claim that Bitcoin is an unproductive asset relative to AI stocks. On the other side, the hosts point to a stack of bullish forecasts from Willie Woo, Galaxy, Michael Nado, and Bitwise that range from a conservative $200,000 cycle top to a bull case of $1.6 million by 2036.

The discussion centers on whether Bitcoin’s old four-year cycle still applies. The hosts suggest the market structure has changed after the ETF era and the rise of larger, more patient buyers, even as Michael Saylor’s recent buying slowed to zero for the week. They frame the real question as who the next marginal buyer is if Bitcoin is to scale from a multitrillion-dollar asset to something much larger.

A second major theme is crypto’s growing confrontation with Wall Street. ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is partnering with TradeXYZ around Hyperliquid, while a separate fight is erupting over tokenized stocks and issuer vetoes. The hosts argue that onchain price discovery is becoming more important, even if offchain venues still dominate liquidity.

The episode also touches on Robinhood Chain’s revenue spike and collapse, and on Zcash’s treasury politics, where a rapidly enlarged grant fund is now provoking a governance backlash over how block rewards should be allocated.