Bitwise: Bitcoin to Hit $200K in 2026 Despite Current Volatility

Ryan Rasmussen, Head of Research at Bitwise, used his Yahoo Finance appearance to frame the recent Bitcoin sell-off as a natural maturation process rather than a fundamental trend break. He opened with a near-term assessment that “we’re closer to the bottom here today than we have been for the past few weeks,” linking the drawdown to sharply risk-off conditions and ETF-era flow dynamics. In his framing, Bitcoin “really was a leader of this risk-off move starting in mid-October,” and he expects it to “be a leader to the upside once things start to turn around,” adding that the market feels nearer to that inflection than it did “a week or two weeks ago.”

When asked whether spot Bitcoin ETFs have become a double-edged sword, Rasmussen agreed, describing a market that now has deeper liquidity but more cross-currents. “Bitcoin, in our view, is one of the biggest technological developments of the past 15 years,” he said, before explaining that institutionalization brings “new investors and adds more liquidity to the market,” yet also means “we’re seeing a lot more choppiness in times where risk-off moves happen.” He pointed to hedge funds rotating in and out via basis trades and emphasized that “you just have more market participants.” Over time, he expects that shift to damp volatility, but not in a straight line: “throughout that journey, we’re going to see some choppiness, and certainly over the past month, we’ve seen that.”

The composition of Bitcoin buyers is, in Rasmussen’s view, changing in a stabilizing direction. “The buyers for Bitcoin that we’re seeing come into the market today are more long-term buyers than we’ve seen in the past,” he said, naming wealth managers and financial advisors who “are adding Bitcoin to model portfolios” and “rebalancing on a standard basis.” That institutional style of demand “should all reduce volatility, add more long-term demand,” though he also noted a counterweight: corporate treasury buying that was strong earlier in the year has faded.

“The corporate treasuries that are purchasing Bitcoin were coming in in size earlier this year, and that’s really dried up,” he said, arguing that this demand pause is “in part due to this sell-off that we’ve seen in October.” Rasmussen stressed that institutional adoption is gradual rather than instantaneous: “That doesn’t mean that right away they deploy all of their capital.” Even so, he cited early signals such as endowment participation: “even Harvard, we saw with their recent filing, is buying Bitcoin in their endowment.”

Pressed on why volatility still looks elevated despite institutional participation, Rasmussen separated short-horizon spikes from long-run trend. “If you look at the trend over the past 10 years, volatility has certainly been falling,” he said, but conceded that “over this short-term period, you do see spikes in volatility.” This nuanced view acknowledges the market’s transitional phase while maintaining confidence in the long-term stabilization trend.

Rasmussen acknowledged the pain of lower prices for recent buyers but insisted the medium-term path remains higher. “Lower prices are a gift and a curse, of course,” he said. “A lot of investors are feeling pain right now who bought Bitcoin above $100,000 or closer to the $125,000 mark, but we believe that Bitcoin’s going to end the year higher than it is today.” He reiterated that the short-term bottoming process is likely advanced before pivoting to his structural thesis: “Institutions are finally here.”

The $200,000 price target itself was stated unambiguously. “So this year, we had a price target of $200,000. And I think it’s safe to say that come December, that’s not going to happen. But we do believe that in 2026, Bitcoin will hit $200,000,” Rasmussen said. He attributed that forecast to institutional inflows arriving “in waves,” spanning “wealth managers or endowments or pensions or corporations or governments,” which he believes are creating “a systemic imbalance of demand versus supply.”

On macro factors, Rasmussen conceded an irony that an asset marketed as sovereign and untethered now reacts to central-bank expectations. Post-COVID, he said, Bitcoin has traded in a “fiscally-dominated environment where rate cuts and other macro elements do play more of a role,” and correlations to equities have “spike[d] or raise[d].” Still, he argued correlations are drifting back toward historical lows, and he emphasized Bitcoin’s tendency to do well in “low rate environments and risk on environments.” Regarding the December Federal Reserve meeting, he said “no cut in December is largely priced into the market,” and suggested investors have “already started to turn to 2026” for their positioning decisions.