While the cryptocurrency market has experienced very sharp declines since October 2025, expectations for a new bull market are increasing among investors.
While there are differing predictions regarding the bottom and the start of a new bull market, a current assessment comes from Bitwise Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Matt Hougan.
In a recent blog post, Bitwise’s CIO stated that positive signals regarding Bitcoin and the formation of a bottom in the market are beginning to emerge.
Hougan, while acknowledging that Bitcoin’s rise since early July, the renewed inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs, and the recovery in investor sentiment are positive signs of a bottoming out, said it is still too early to say that “the bear market is completely over” for the current situation.
At this point, Bitwise’s CIO stated that the bad period in the crypto market is about to end, claiming that the new bull market will be based on the convergence of crypto and traditional finance.
Along with the bottoming out signals, Hougan argued that the next crypto bull market could be driven by Hyperliquid-style projects and large financial companies like Robinhood.
At this point, Bitwise’s CIO stated that the next cryptocurrency bull market will likely be driven by trends such as stablecoins, tokenization, 24-hour trading, instant payments, and institutional DeFi.
The first group consists of crypto protocols that generate real revenue, such as Hyperliquid (HYPE), operating in decentralized derivatives markets, while the second group comprises publicly traded financial companies like Robinhood (HOOD) that aim to integrate traditional finance with crypto infrastructure.
According to Hougan, these two structures are among the best examples of how to benefit most from the combination of traditional finance and blockchain technology.
Bitwise’s CIO said of the hype, “I think even if the price doubles, it will still have reasonable valuation.”
He also predicted that more crypto projects could adopt similar token economies in the coming period, citing altcoins such as Uniswap (UNI), Aave (AAVE), and Morpho (MORPHO) as examples.
Bitwise’s CIO concluded by arguing that while previous bull markets were largely fueled by expectation and speculation, the new cycle will be built on real use cases, revenue-generating applications, and structural transformation within the financial sector.
