Why The Shutdown Ending Could Trigger New Highs for Bitcoin

For anyone watching Bitcoin cling to support around $100,000, the mood might feel like déjà vu. But Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan insists: that sideways price action isn’t a sign of weakness — it’s a gift.

“My own view is that Bitcoin tripping along sideways here around $100K is a gift,” Hougan told Coinage in a new interview. “I think it's an opportunity to stack SATs. I think it's an opportunity to build positions.”

That optimistic stance might sound out of step with the current tone on crypto Twitter, where sentiment has plunged into what Hougan calls “extreme levels of bearishness, extreme levels of even depression.” But among institutions, it’s a different story. “There's relative excitement and no panic at all,” Hougan noted. “They're still buying.”

If institutions are calmly accumulating while retail capitulates, what might flip the script for everyone else? Certainly news of an end to the longest government shutdown in history seems like a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. As part of that, Hougan believes a sentiment bottom is near.

“I think we will cycle through this bearish market,” he said, and that eventually, “the institutional demand and end-of-year window dressing will push Bitcoin back to new all time highs.” While he doesn’t think Bitcoin will hit his early year prediction of crossing $200,000 this year, he does expect “we’re going to bottom out from a sentiment perspective and accelerate into the end of the year.”

Much of that depends on whether the market finally clears out the debris from October’s unexpected deleveraging. Hougan sees two main paths: “Either a major body surfaces so people can get that out of their system, or the passage of time — let’s say four weeks with no major hacks or no major other issues — will help us sort of clear that out of the system.”

If crypto can avoid further landmines, Hougan sees a few upside catalysts ready to step in: “Progress on the Clarity Act in Congress or rising expectations that we're going to have progress on the Clarity Act is an upside surprise that's coming to the market.” Rate cut expectations, he adds, could also be bullish tailwinds — especially if markets start to anticipate looser Fed policy under a second Trump administration.

“I think the Trump administration wants lower rates,” Hougan said. “They've politicized the Fed. They want to install a new Fed chair that's going to be more dovish than Powell is.”

That pivot to lower rates could set the stage for risk assets like Bitcoin to rip, especially as sentiment rebounds. “The market aggressively punishes bad news and ignores good news. And that's a classic bear market,” Hougan explained. “Eventually we'll get to the point where the market is sort of numb to bad news… and maybe we start to run away from this $100K number.”

In the meantime, institutions aren’t waiting around. Bitwise recently launched the first spot Solana ETF with staking enabled, and Hougan says the demand has been overwhelming: “It’s the fastest growing new ETF launch of 2025 across all ETFs… [and] number one by trading volume.”

That early success is a clear sign, Hougan argues, that institutional appetite for high-quality crypto assets is still “pent up and needs to be released.” And he believes that more regulation will unlock the next generation of winners. “I wouldn't be surprised to see 2 or 3 more new assets emerge in 2026 reflective of this new environment,” he said, predicting they’ll “bubble up into the top 20 or 30” and likely get their own ETPs.

As for the four-year cycle? Hougan’s over it. “I think the four year cycle is dead,” he said bluntly. With halving events now less significant and fewer blow-up risks like Mt. Gox or FTX, he believes Bitcoin is transitioning into a more “institutional phase" where fundamentals, not hype, drive the narrative. “We're in for a slower churn upwards,” he said. “That's like its own 5- to 10-year cycle.”

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