This Cycle May Not Be Led by Bitcoin?

The logic of the bull market is changing, with privacy coins and fundamental tokens possibly taking over the trend.

Written by: David Feld, Bankless

Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News

A new cycle seems to have begun, and there are some real concerns surrounding Bitcoin that deserve serious consideration, and these concerns go beyond just quantum security vulnerabilities.

Many of my online peers and I are contemplating a possibility: Bitcoin may underperform the market in this upcoming cycle, just as most altcoins failed to reach any significant historical highs in the last cycle.

Bitcoin's price has surged significantly, and you might think my idea is absurd, but please read on.

Bitcoin Has Become Mainstream

The core story of the last cycle was the mainstreaming of Bitcoin.

The market was kicked off by the approval of spot ETFs, allowing institutional funds to enter, with impressive results: BlackRock's IBIT became the fastest ETF to surpass $10 billion in assets. Then Trump announced his candidacy and won, with a campaign platform that included establishing a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (BSR), which became a major catalyst for Bitcoin's price to break the six-figure mark. Meanwhile, Saylor continued to buy Bitcoin in large quantities every week, and this wave of buying led other companies to include digital assets in their reserves, continuing to hoard coins.

The key point is that in the last cycle, Bitcoin significantly broadened the group of individual and institutional holders. No other crypto asset has received such widespread support, both inside and outside the market.

But now, I find it hard to identify new incremental buyers. The DAT trading narrative has basically collapsed; the Bitcoin strategic reserve narrative has largely materialized, and the government primarily relies on confiscated Bitcoin rather than direct purchases. Those who want to buy Bitcoin can now do so through ETFs. I'm not saying the buying pressure will disappear, but the opening of these channels itself is a market catalyst, and such positive news cannot simply be repeated.

When Bitcoin started this cycle, there weren't a massive number of new buyers waiting to be released; instead, it faced multiple adverse factors. What worries me most is the unresolved quantum risk: a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from a public key, allowing access to the Bitcoin under that address. Certainly, Bitcoin developers have proposed protective measures like BIP-360, but a network-wide migration plan has yet to be adopted.

Then there's the potential selling pressure from Strategy. Saylor now operates this company as an actively managed fund, weighing Bitcoin holdings, shareholder demands, preferred stock dividends, and debt repayments, no longer solely focused on