Michael Saylor, executive chairman of Strategy (MSTR), the largest publicly traded Bitcoin holder said Thursday on X that the crypto winter was over as bitcoin held above $78,000, a price level first reached early on April 22, according to CoinDesk data.
In a Game of Thrones-style image, wearing a fur coat, an item of clothing not particularly suited to late winter, and riding a horse, Saylor, whose company recently added 13,927 bitcoins, bringing his treasury’s total BTC holdings to 780,897, declared “Winter is over,” a statement not all crypto analysts agree with.
“Even though winter is over for bitcoin, which I disagree with, it’s still very cold for altcoins,” said Jason Fernandes, market analyst and co-founder of AdLunam.
For Mati Greenspan, former senior market analyst at eToro and founder of Quantum Economics, what Bitcoin and the broader crypto market have experienced since the October 10 “flash crash,” which triggered an estimated $19 billion in forced liquidations in 24 hours, cannot even be considered a crypto winter.
“I’m not sure I would exactly classify what we just saw as a crypto winter,” Greenspan said, rather it was a “significant pullback within a broader bull market.”
Greenspan, however, agrees with what Saylor seems to suggest: Bitcoin has bottomed out and is likely to go higher from here. “Yes, I think it’s very likely that we’ve seen the bottom,” he said.
Greenspan and other experts say Saylor’s comments, along with his company’s ongoing bitcoin purchases, suggest a transition to a more permanent institutional era of bitcoin. A new cycle characterized by corporate Bitcoin treasury market dominance and a shift in institutional sentiment.
Nation-state adoption
Even so, institutional adoption is only one piece of the puzzle.
“Yes, increased institutional adoption will kick off this next step, but what Saylor is missing is nation-state adoption, which is undoubtedly imminent,” Greenspan said.
The crypto founder and market analyst said that to date, the crypto industry has seen three distinct adoption cycles.
The first, he said, was led by early adopters in 2013. And then came the “mass retail awakening in 2017” and, now, institutional adoption in 2021.
“The fourth and final major factor is nation-state adoption, which I think will happen very soon, especially with the abrupt change in U.S. course during U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term,” Greenspan said.
“Imagine central banks adding bitcoin to their balance sheets to maintain price stability, the same way they added gold in the past,” he added.
To use Greenspan’s point of view, nation-state adoption is already moving beyond theory and into government balance sheets. Under Trump, for example, the United States is considering creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve, although it is neither formalized nor operational; the government already holds around 300,000 BTC. El Salvador continues its daily buying program toward a treasury of 7,500 BTC, while China and the United Kingdom hold approximately 190,000 BTC and 61,000 BTC, respectively. Activity is also emerging at the sub-sovereign level, with entities such as Wisconsin and New Jersey introducing bitcoin exposure into public retirement benefits.
