Analyst Called Bitcoin Top; Reveals 2026 Forecast | Ben Cowen

October was the four-year cycle top. It's just that the bleed is is is more like the 2019 style bare market. The only other time in history where Bitcoin topped on apathy and it was in 2019. Bitcoin is is going to drop into into the summer of 2026. I don't think you'll have a a massive rotation in the altcoins that leads to an alt season.

If you made me say, "Well, Ben, what if what if the four-year cycle is wrong?" Right? What if this time is different and you're on the wrong side? Find me the bullcase. If you made me do that, what I would say is this.

We're back with Ben Cowan, founder of Into the Cryptoverse. Check out his work channel linked down below. He's got great resources on YouTube and on X. So, uh, Ben, welcome back to the show. you've correctly called the top basically end of uh September, October. You were on the show several times throughout the years throughout the year in 2025 warning us on my channel and other channels as well that Q4 2025 may be the cycle top. Bitcoin has fallen uh to now uh 87,000 is the last number on my screen uh from its highs earlier in the summer. So that trend turned out to be correct. anything in particular about the way Bitcoin has moved in the last couple months that may have surprised you and then we'll get to your outlook.

>> Well, I think it's really interesting, David, and by the way, thanks for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here as always.

>> Yes. Um,

>> but I I I think that I think this has been a very interesting cycle because in one sense you could argue that Bitcoin tops when it always does, right? like at the end of the post having year and there's actually a really interesting chart I could share with you guys to show you what I'm talking about.

>> So if you look at at this chart this is the ROI of Bitcoin from the low. So from the cycle bottom. Um so to provide some context on what this chart is even showing. If you look at the Bitcoin chart on Trading View, what you'll see is there's these major lows that occur every four years or so, right? Um, and if we just take the ROI of each of these, we just look at those cycles and we overlay them on top of one another, you get, you know, you get a chart that um, you know, that looks like like this, right? And what's interesting is we've had diminishing returns once again where every cycle we don't go up as much as the prior cycle. But David, what's really interesting is that this cycle, assuming the top is in, which obviously a lot of people are still debating, it's only lasted a,000 it lasted 1,062 days. Last cycle lasted 1,059 days and the cycle before that lasted 1,068. So it's it's hard to look at that and not at least consider that it's over, right? Like it's hard to look at that and be like, "All right, it we're going to ignore it." No, I feel like it it does require some context. What's really interesting about this top in particular and it's it's like like what are the bulls looking at to claim that Bitcoin owes us something else from here this cycle because in in in many ways it did what it always does and perhaps we're just in the bare market now. What I think a lot of people are are frustrated by is that a lot of like the the main indicators that people have historically historically looked at to sort of call cycle tops, whether it be like things like the terminal price or the pi cycle top or whatever metric that you want to look at, like none of those actually trigger, right? And so what I was looking at was the social interest, which we talk a lot at into the cryptoverse. And this is the price of Bitcoin colorcoded by social interest. You can see that Bitcoin, it had a top in October. Good chance it is the top of this 4-year cycle, but it topped on apathy rather than euphoria. So like in 2021 and in 2017, we topped on euphoria, but in 2025, we topped on apathy. So, while the 4-year cycle top occurred when it always does, what's really interesting is if you look at the bare markets, if you look at the current bare market and compare it to the last couple, you can see that we're actually, you know, we're actually well above what we were like at this point. In prior bare markets, Bitcoin had already dropped like 50% or more at some point, 50 to 70%. This time, it hasn't. And so what I say is instead of instead of just comparing it to the prior bare markets in the that that started in the post having year and then went through the midterm year, if you look at the social interest, you have to say, all right, when is the only other time in history where Bitcoin topped on apathy and it was in 2019. Now, if this is the only metric that we had, I don't know that it would be enough of a coincidence to look at, right? like it's just okay. So what? But one of the interesting things about this coincidence is that in 2019, Bitcoin topped in June, right? It topped in June and then it went down. It topped basically 2 months before the Federal Reserve ended quantitative tightening. So the Federal Reserve ended QT in on August 1st, 2019. Bitcoin topped in June. this cycle, Bitcoin topped October and then the Fed ended QT in December, right? So just a couple of months away. So there's a lot of similarities. And so when you actually look at this bare market compared to the bare market that came off of that 2019 high, it actually looks like we're tracking it pretty closely. So my my thought process right now is that we're in a bare market. Like Bitcoin is in a bare market, but structurally it's it's a little different than some of the pri bare markets because we're bleeding a lot slower than the prior bare markets. And the reason we're bleeding a lot slower is because we topped on apathy rather than euphoria. So I I do think that October was the four-year cycle top. It's just that the bleed is is is more like the 2019 style bare market.

Okay, I'll just flip over to my screen for just a minute since you brought up the Fed. I'm not saying there is a causal relationship. I'm just noticing something here since we're talking about the Fed funds rate. If you overlay the Fed funds rate with the Bitcoin price over the last 2 years, and I don't think the supply is going back to more than 2022, but in 2022, as you mentioned, during the tightening cycle, Bitcoin other risk assets fell. However, all throughout 2023, when the Fed continued to raise rates, uh Bitcoin started rallying. The rallying didn't stop. um until basically uh earlier this year, earlier in October and and late September. And so the point is it it does look like since 2023 that um a Fed funds rate uh move has predated any moves or has led Bitcoin moves. So when the Bitcoin price fell, it it roughly mirrors the Fed easing into u August uh of last year when they started easing August last year. I'm not I'm not saying that's a Fed easing cycle is now causing Bitcoin to fall. But it does seem to have been the case uh this current cycle. Can you explain this? Does it make any sense to you or we should we just ignore that?

>> I mean I think there's a reality of right as I think was it Warren Buffett who said if you wait if you wait for the Robins spring is over. You know if you wait for all the good stuff to happen like all the good price action is behind you. In 2019, rate cuts were happening and Bitcoin was going down. I think the reason why Bitcoin is struggling is not because of the rate cuts. You could argue it's because we're still in restrictive territory with the Fed funds rate. Like if you if you assume the 2-year if you assume the 2-year Treasury yield is approximately equal to the neutral rate, then you could argue that even with the Fed funds rate at 3.75%, it is still arguably restrictive. And so perhaps the reason why Bitcoin is falling while the rate cuts are ongoing is not because of the rate cuts. It might be protesting the fact that we're not getting more rate cuts, right? And so in 2019 and 2020 when Bitcoin finally started to bottom and turn around, it was after it was after several rate cuts had already had already kind of come into play. And then after rates went to zero, that's when Bitcoin took off again. So, I mean, rate cuts are good in general for risk assets, but risk assets like Bitcoin also have a way of pricing things in like well before they happen. So, it's not the rate cuts that are causing Bitcoin to fall in my opinion. It's it's the fact that we're not necessarily getting enough of them. And then the other the other aspect of it too is that when rates are high like they were from 2022 through 2025 for for the most part what what typically happens is that people pile into the to the lower risk assets, right? So in crypto they piled into Bitcoin. That's why we talked about Bitcoin dominance all these years. In the stock market they piled in the Magnificent 7, right? In metals they p people piled into gold and silver, right? So people pile into the blue chips when they're faced with uncertainty because they're not confident that the micro caps of every of every asset class will survive that uncertainty that they think is coming. But people think, I think, long-term that Bitcoin will survive. So they're more confident, hey, if you're going to put your money in anything in crypto, you're better off putting it in Bitcoin when you're in this very uncertain environment. as rates come down, people might take on a little bit more risk and and and put it, you know, put their capital elsewhere, which maybe takes away from some of the some of the bull cases that that Bitcoin had during higher interest rate in environment.

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Now that we have the Fed basically restarting QE which started in December 12th, they were purchasing up to $40 billion a month in treasuries in reserves. Uh is that the beginning of a new liquidity injection globally or at least in the US that could propel Bitcoin to much higher levels? In other words, the end of this top?

>> Well, I I think that it it Bitcoin I think will eventually go higher. Like I don't think that like this is the top that will ever that will be the top forever. Um, but you know, for reference, and again, I I bring up 2019 cuz it's the only reference point we have, right? In 2019, the Fed ended QT in August and then Bitcoin bled until December, even though the balance sheet was expanding, right? The balance sheet was going up, but it just wasn't going up fast enough, right? It wasn't going it wasn't really going up as much as it needed to. And so I I think that is kind of the issue that we're facing is that like yes, liquidity is being injected, but you could argue that it's not enough to really lead to that next narrative of of much higher prices. So I think in the short term um you know there there there's a chance that Bitcoin could wick down to the April 2025 low, right? Like there's a chance that something like that could happen. Uh we've actually seen that pattern on Nvidia and Google already happen like last year. So I I could see something like that happening and and maybe as more liquidity comes in uh things could turn around but I I don't I don't think we're there uh quite yet.

>> You have actually compared on your own channel you've compared Bitcoin to the setup of Nvidia and Google. Explain please what that means.

>> Yeah. So I mean I think this is kind of like to play devil's advocate for myself. I feel like if you know if you're going to be an investor you have to know the case against what your base case is. And so like my base case is that Bitcoin is is going to drop into into the summer of 2026. I think we face macro headwinds into the summer of 2026. Um but if you made me say, "Well, Ben, what if what if the four-year cycle is wrong, right? What if this time is different and you're on the wrong side?" Find me the bullcase. If you made me do that, what I would say is this. I would say Bitcoin put in a slightly higher high and if it sweeps this low, it's not impossible for it to rally to a new all-time high, right? Like if it came down here, it's not impossible for it to go back up. That that pattern is actually something we saw Nvidia and Google do last year. So, if you look at the Nvidia price chart, um you'll see what I'm talking about, right? So, Nvidia also had a slightly higher high. It swept the low and then it went to a new all-time high. Right? Google, I believe, did the same thing, right? So, you have a slightly higher high, you sweep the low and then it rallied to a new all-time high. So, it is possible for something like that to happen and for the 4-year cycle to break. But what I would also caution people against is that we had a we also had a kind of a similar setup in 2019. Not exactly the same thing, but we had sort of this low by Bitcoin and we then swept the low, right? You can see we had a low, we put in our high 2 months before QT ended. We then swept that low and right when we swept it, Bitcoin had this massive rally back up to $10,000. Right. What's really interesting is that the current price action is essentially just a 10x multiple of what happened in 2019. Because if Bitcoin were to drop to this wick right here and maybe goes slightly below it to say 73 74K or something, what's really interesting is that's where that drop was in 2019 was right around 7,300. So basically just onetenth of the price. And what happened is that Bitcoin after that point it rallied back up to 10K. Now the reason why this isn't this is important is because you want to look for confluence when you're looking for you know whether this is a bare market or not. So if it is a bare market which is my base case for now but if it is a bare market I would say there's a a decent chance that whenever bitcoin sweeps this low it should then rally back up to the 50we moving average. Right? So you can see that in 2022 when the cycle was over, Bitcoin eventually rallied back up to the 50we moving average, right? We dropped and then we rallied to the 50we. And in 2018, right, we dropped and then we rallied to the 50we. So what's interesting is there does exist a scenario where Bitcoin sort of drops into that April 2025 low kind of like what Nvidia did and Google did in in a prior market structure and then rally back up and then it's possible that then people call for new all-time highs to follow that Nvidia move and to follow that Google move. But it could play out like 2019 where it just kind of rallies back up to 100K. back then it rallied up to 10K and then it falls and from there where I would expect it to to bottom at for a while would be the 200WE moving average and the reason for that is because the 200WE moving average is something that just seemingly comes into play for Bitcoin every 3 to four years right sometimes we go below it but a lot of times we stay right around that that 200E moving average so I think the 200E moving average is going to come into play by the summer of 2026 I would say October 2026 at the latest

>> okay uh will this carry the 20 uh 2026 altcoin market with it. You think, Ben?

>> So, in 2019, there was not a rotation, right? So, because we topped on apathy rather than euphoria, there was not a rotation. The alt seasons that people talk about, so if you look at the Bitcoin dominance chart, what you'll see are there these massive periods where Bitcoin dominance like falls off a cliff in 2017 and in 2021. And if you look at the social interest at the time, if we go back to the uh the raw value here, rather than color coding it, you can see that retail interest was trending up throughout 2017 and throughout 2020 and 2021 before alt season even happened. The problem is that we're seeing the opposite today. We're seeing retail interest actually go the opposite direction, right? It's going down. If anything, more retail participants are leaving than coming into the space. There's more institutional interest absolutely, but there's less retail interest right now. That doesn't mean retail won't come back. I think they will, but I think they require much looser monetary policy in order to do that. And I think also they need to actually trust the cryptoverse more because there's been a lot of there's been a lot of like scams and and stuff this year, the last couple years of people the memecoin craze and stuff that I think has made a lot of people skeptical about in investing in crypto. So, I think we're going through a maturing process. So, I I I think like every year you will have some altcoins that can put in new all-time highs, even on a Bitcoin lower high. David, even in 2022, we saw we saw Luna put in an all-time high in 2022 and then it went to zero, right? So, yes, you could have some alts go to all-time highs, but I don't think you'll have a a massive rotation in the altcoins that leads to an alt season, if that makes sense. Right? Even like, think about it. In 2023, we saw Salana rallying, right? In 2024, XRP. 2025, more recently, we've seen Zcash rally, right? So, every year there's something that's rallying, but that doesn't mean you're in an alt season. So maybe next year, who knows, maybe Ethereum can do can do better than than some of the other. I don't know. But the point is, while there might be some cryptocurrencies that do well, I think the collective altcoin market will still struggle for for some time.

>> Is there a narrative that we can ascribe to the Zcash explosion basically up 700% since late September? Is that a micro narrative mean meaning the Zcash ecosystem in itself or can we talk about some broader trends uh that's shifting investor capital into into privacy tokens uh that may be a boost for other similar coins as well.

>> Yeah. I mean I I think we even saw Monero like doing well not too long ago. the the problem that I generally have with a lot of these a lot of those narratives is is not that you can't make money on them. It's just that over over the long haul like like Bitcoin is just by far the better investment than these alts. So like let me just like give you an example and I I'll give you an example with the one you asked about Zcash, right? Like Zcash has done incredibly well. Um and and here's a chart of the Zcash valuation against Bitcoin, right? So yeah, like it's done really well. If you bought it in August, you're doing incredible. I do think there has been more of a sort of this narrative going into the the privacy direction, like people do value their privacy and and this is one way to sort of reflect that. But at the same time, it's hard for me to take an altcoin as a serious long-term investment because, you know, there are spikes that these altcoins will get at certain times, but then eventually they just end up continuing to bleed against Bitcoin. I mean, for instance, Zcash has been bleeding to Bitcoin really since like, you know, 2016. Even if you exclude um, you know, this entire drop, I mean, Zcash would still have to rally from the current levels. I mean, it would have to rally like 2,000% just to get back to where it was against Bitcoin in the summer of 2017. So, I I think for me, like it's I'm not saying there's not money to be made. There absolutely is. I I think people that that caught that that caught this move should absolutely be proud of themselves and and pat themselves in the back. But, it's it's hard for me because there's so there's like so many different altcoins. Um, it's so easy to miss any of these individual rallies and it's easy to beat yourself up if you do miss them. But I think long term, you know, I think Bitcoin has has been the better play. In the short term, you know, my guess is that it will eventually end up like a lot of the other altcoins where it has a really nice rally and then it then ends up consolidating for a year or two and not really making another move for a little while. Again, we saw Salana do the same thing, right? Salana did the same thing against Bitcoin in 2023. And then um again we we've seen every year we've seen a few alts do this and then when the new calendar year comes then it's like the narrative changes and then cooler heads prevail and we're like okay maybe it's not going to go flip Bitcoin or something you know. So I think props to the people that made money on it. Um, I do I if you look at Monero, you can I think Monero was actually one that was even pumping earlier uh than Zcash, but it wasn't as um it wasn't as obvious like it was it was starting to to rally back in 2024 some uh but it it hasn't been it hasn't been nearly as explosive as as as Zcash was. And even in this case like with Monero, another privacy coin, I mean, it's just been a series of of lower highs um for a for a really long time. So, I guess I'm in the camp that if they're if they're going to do something different, they need to prove it rather than me assume that this time is different.

>> It it does beg the more philosophical question as to what the cryptocurrenc cryptocurrency market is going to basically be in a few years. There was a time when crypto's early days crypto meant Bitcoin and that was it. And then we saw the Bitcoin dominance drop from 96% to basically down to 30 something in late 2018 or um early 2018, late 2017. That was the first time that people were made aware of the fact that there's not just Bitcoin out there. There's a bunch of other stuff. And of course, we saw all coins explode in 2021. That's I was just talking to a friend of mine, actually, a member of my team uh preparing for your interview actually. I said, "What can we talk about with Ben?" And they said, "Well, yeah, I mean, all coins are dead." That's basically what he said. And that's just his sentiment. I'll get yours. But that does seem to be reflective of the overall sentiment now especially since Bitcoin was basically been have been declared money by the Trump administration indirectly of course of course and so it begs the question as to what institutions and large players will view the crypto market in a few years. Is it just going to be Bitcoin that people will be interested in?

>> No. I a lot of people would be surprised to hear me say that. Um I think that Bitcoin has been the easy play for the last few years, right? It had everything behind it. You had higher rates. you had quantitative tightening. You had this bull market that was basically a Bitcoin maxi bull market where everything else was bleeding to it. Um, but I've been around crypto long enough to know that, you know, what is dead may never die. I mean, it kind of seems like we just have these this habit of repeating the cycles. And so, one of the things that I look at to try to maintain some level of like taking the emotions out of it, right? cuz when when all coins are bleeding for this many years, like it's easy to, you know, it's easy to sort of let that get to you if you hold a lot of altcoins. I haven't, but if you look here at this chart, this is total two. So, it's everything besides Bitcoin minus USDT. So, we're subtracting out USDT and then in parenthesis, and then we're dividing everything by the market cap of Bitcoin. So when you look at this, what you'll see is that altcoins have been bleeding against Bitcoin since 2021, right? But they also did the same thing last cycle. What you'll notice is that in the 2017 2018 cycle, they basically bled down to near the current levels, right? So in a sense, it's not really that different. It's just that when we get down to these levels all the way down here at these lows, people say that it's all dead and and it'll never come back. What I think is the most likely outcome for altcoins is I I honestly I still think that all Bitcoin pairs might fall in again and and form a low, maybe a double bottom or a slightly lower low, but I think they're going to do what they did last cycle where they just kind of consolidate down at these lows for a year and a half. A lot of people thought, I think mistakenly, that the minute alt Bitcoin pairs come down here that you have an alt season. But remember, guess what year they guess what year alt Bitcoin pairs hit the range lows last cycle, right? It was it was 2 months before quantitative tightening ended. It's all the or no, they hit the range lows a month after quantitative tightening ended. Sorry, a month after quantitative tightening ended and and and around the time the Fed funds rate was near the 2-year yield. So, I think what's happening is you're probably going to see altcoins stop bleeding against Bitcoin in the coming months. I'm not saying it's over yet, uh, but you might see them slow down that bleed for a little while as they as they sort of fall into these range lows and try to form a low. That doesn't mean they can't go lower on their USD pairs, David. And this is what I was this is what I try to communicate on my communicate on my channel is that when alts bottomed against Bitcoin in the last business cycle over here when they bottomed they still went down on their USD pairs and the reason they went down was because Bitcoin went down. So if you look at total 3 yes they bottomed against Bitcoin and they started to go up against Bitcoin but that's not an all season right? they they were going up against Bitcoin because Bitcoin was dropping more than altcoins were because and the reason for that was because altcoins were already dead from the 2018 bare market, right? So they had the 2018 bare market where they dropped like 99%. And then Bitcoin rallied several hundred% in 2019. It was a Bitcoin maxi bull market back then too. So that when Bitcoin finally rolled over, the altcoins had already gotten annihilated. So when Bitcoin started to drop in that bare market when QT ended, altcoins actually went up against Bitcoin. But the reason they went down on their USD pairs was because Bitcoin dragged them down at that point, right? The overall market went down and then the altcoins went with it. So usually what you would assume happens is that altcoins bottom against Bitcoin first and then they bottom against the US dollar. That's what happened um in in the last cycle. So that's the way I see this playing out. I I see that, you know, 2025 uh being kind of like the start of the bare market and then going into 2026 and then hopefully we can find a low by mid to late 2026 and then next cycle. I I think that altcoins will probably do better than than they did this cycle, which is not saying much, right? Admittedly, it's not saying much, but one of the reasons for that is because I think that when they replace Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve, they're going to put someone in who's a lot more doubbish, and I think they're going to try to rekindle the animal spirits and and it's going to make people want to potentially invest in higher risk assets again. Uh, but we're not there yet. And I I still think that's going to take some time to get to.

>> And I have to ask you about this. Several people on my show and others as well have said that Bitcoin leads the stock market. Can you just confirm or debunk this? The reason they're bringing this up is because since Bitcoin topped in late September, um that drop they say is a leading indicator of what's about to come in Q1 for Nvidia and all the other tech stocks that we talked about earlier leading the charge downward for the NASDAQ and the S&P 500. Is there any truth to this pattern?

>> Sort of. But let me provide a nuance view to it, okay? Because I it's not as cleancut as I think Bitcoin is a leading indicator for certainly some things like liquidity. Um like a lot of people thought mistakenly that Bitcoin would follow M2, right? But then that narrative fell flat on its face in 2025. Bitcoin usually leads M2. I mean usually if Bitcoin starts going down, M2 starts going down 6 or 8 months later. In fact, in 2022, if you waited until M2 topped to sell your Bitcoin, you basically would have sold Bitcoin at 20K, like at the bottom essentially. So, like liquidity in M2 is not a good indicator for for Bitcoin for the stock market. What again and I know at the risk of sounding repetitive this is still very similar to what happened in the 2019 run because back then bit this is so the the main chart we're looking at here uh this chart right here this is Bitcoin divided by the S&P not Bitcoin it's Bitcoin divided by the S&P line is the S&P 500 okay so what you'll notice is that back then Bitcoin topped in June but then the stock market just continued to go up, right? Like it it continued to go up for a while and then eventually it crashed and then when it crashed it made the Fed cut rates and turn the money printers on and it led to everything. So what you could argue, you could almost argue right now, which is kind of insane, but what you could argue is that Bitcoin will likely follow this 2019 move against the S&P until the S&P gets a large correction, right? Because the argument is that the Fed will likely come to the rescue of stocks if they start to fall, right? Like if if the stock market drops 20% like it did last April, the Fed's going to try to come rescue that, right? If if someone's altcoin drops 80%. The Fed doesn't care. You know, it's not like they're concerned about about that at all. So, I think the the the difficult dilemma that the cryptoverse finds itself in right now, as far as I'm concerned, is that in order to really ignite like the QE bull market, like again, we've been in the QT bull market for Bitcoin, right? That this entire move here was a quantit was a bull market during quantitative tightening.

>> That's right.

>> Yeah. In order to get to a bull market during quantitative easing, you need a lot more easing than what we're getting right now. The problem is that you're not going to get that until one of two things happen. One, the stock market crashes like it did in 2020. That's one option. That was a pandemic induced recession, right? Like I don't I doubt the unemployment rate is going to spike to 15% overnight like it did back then. Although I don't know exactly the effects that AI is going to have. The other option is that you know a power gets replaced and then someone comes in and then they just they you know they they they throw fiscal responsibility out the window and and just run it hot. So I I I think right now you know and the stock market also kind of topped out into 2021 early 2022. So there's some correlation there as well. And and then one more. So I'm not I'm not saying that the guys on your channel that have said it are going to be wrong like they could be right. I think there is a case to be made that there'll be a correction by stocks in early 2022 or sorry early 2026. But one of the reasons is if you look at the S&P 500 divided by the money supply you know this is this whole pattern is very sim similar uh to what happened you know 25 years ago when you know if you just kind of take this whole pattern and overlay it I mean even the 20% drop by the stock market in April kind of lines up with it. So, you could argue that if we are in something similar, we're kind of approaching a correction, but even if it is a correction, it still might not actually be the top, you know? Um, just cuz you get a 10% drop doesn't mean it's over. We've had plenty of those. Um, so that's kind of where I am. like I I I do think it makes sense to be somewhat defensive on on on stocks going into sort of the first half of 2026, but I I I don't necessarily know that you can say definitively that Bitcoin always leads the S&P 500 because in 2019, you know, Bitcoin dropped for half a year while the stock market was going up. And you know, that's a long time to potentially just be stuck on the sidelines waiting for the stock market to drop. I mean the stock market can go up a lot over 6 months and and so you got to be careful with with sort of assuming because you also have to remember with stock market there's a lot of passive flows like 401k stuff that we don't really have in crypto. So that's the party there can go on a lot longer than it can in crypto.

>> Well, so final question on Bitcoin uh into 2026 do you have a forecast for the dominance level for us?

>> So, I think that my my sort of base case with dominance is that if if if Bitcoin does get a correction, like it it is certainly possible that dominance could sort of wayne a little bit longer before spiking, but I do believe that Bitcoin dominance will go back up to 66. Like, I think it will go back up near the highs before you get any type of alt season if that makes sense. Right. So, let me just share my screen really quick and I'll show you. Um, if you look at what happened in the last business cycle, Bitcoin dominance first found a top about 1 month after quantitative tightening ended. So, that could correspond to early 2026. Maybe you could argue argue this is that top and perhaps we're just kind of in this bleed. But even then, there still was no alt season where Bitcoin dominance fell off a cliff until dominance swept the high in the ne in the in the QE phase of the bull market. So what I'm suggesting, David, which I know it might sound somewhat convoluted because a lot of times I get critic, you know, one of the common forms of criticism for the type of analysis I presented is like, well, what am I saying? Am I saying the four-ear cycle's in intact? If I am, why do I keep comparing it to 2019? you know, um I think the the way to think about it is that 2020 late 2025 going into 2026 is that 2019 bare market, right? So the the 4year cycle can still be intact and you take that that 6 to9month bare market from 2019 and you just say this is the one that we're going to have in 2025 going into mid to late 2026. That's what makes sense to me. So, I think like there's some conflicting points when I say it's a 4-year cycle, but also we have to look at 2019. But the reason we have to do that is because Bitcoin topped on apathy rather than euphoria. So, I think Bitcoin dominance will go back up before there is a true alt season, which is why long-term I still think Bitcoin is a better hold than than most alts.

>> Fair enough. And finally, I want to ask you about the precious metals because uh this is making news. Elon, even Elon Musk tweeted about silver. I'll show you in just a minute. I know you're not a precious metals focus channel in particular, but uh I think this warrants attention even from a technical perspective. So uh this is a bigger deal than it may seem. Starting January 1st, 2026, China will restrict silver exports. Uh Elon retweeted this. This is where I actually commented rather this is not good. Silver is needed in many industrial processes. As you're aware, silver reached $80 late last week and then it briefly uh hit that level and then very quickly fell back towards 71, which is a 15 or 16% move uh intraday. The biggest single day drop since many many years ago. Um and and this is not the only metal in the metals complex making this reversal. Gold as well. Platinum taking profits. Silver is leading the charge of course. So maybe we can pull up a silver chart or any other metals that you metal that you'd like to look at and just comment on um what this looks like to you if you've we've seen this in many meme coins and crypto um uh spaces as well, but it's happening now in the precious metals space, which is rare uh for metals. And uh just want to get your thoughts on how you see this chart.

>> Yeah, I mean I've been uh I've been pretty bullish on metals for a while. Um, I think you could argue that the alt season that people thought was going to ha happen was actually the heavy metal season, right? Or metal season, uh, where metals kind of just took over. And I think that's sort of the reflection of people starting to value hard assets over over just these like altcoins just print out of thin air. Um, I think with with silver, a lot of times what happens is when one of the main metals like sweeps a prior all-time high, there's a correction. So if you look at at gold for instance or so I look at silver first right? So if you look at silver first since we're already here when silver swapped the high in October what you'll notice if we overlay gold onto the chart that's when gold entered into a correction. Right? So gold found uh this brief correction right here. I know it doesn't look like much but it it felt like a lot at the time. Uh, gold had a correction when silver swept the prior all-time high. So, silver swept the prior all-time high in October. And if you look at gold and you zoom in over here uh to October, you can see that gold had a pretty pretty hefty pullback back then about 11% or so. Now, we've seen platinum sweep the prior all-time high, right? So, now platinum has gone on to sweep its prior all-time high. And I guess this one chart maybe doesn't go back far enough, but let me pull up a different one. Um, so yeah, you can see that platinum has now swept its prior all-time high. And you could argue that, okay, now you're getting another pullback in in metals once again. So I think that's what's going on for the most part right now is that it's just profit taking from people that have made a lot of money on this bull market in metals. Um, it's normal, it's natural. I think long term what I think is going to happen is you know a lot of times when you get these bull markets in in gold they last like 10 years you know I mean you had one from like 1970 until 1980 and then you had one from 2001 until 2011 so they're they last about 10 years but what you'll notice David is that in both of these massive bull markets there was a recession kind of like in between sort of these like two legs of the bull market where the stock market started to really struggle and then the stock market recovered. But when that happened, metals recovered first, right? And we actually got a glimpse of that back in April of 2025 when gold dropped and stocks dropped, but you wouldn't even know that gold dropped by looking at the monthly chart. Gold recovered a lot quicker to new all-time highs. For instance, I mean in in 2008, gold also found a top like the stock market, but it also got right back up to the highs by 2009, whereas the stock market took many years to get back up to the all-time highs. Something similar happened in the '70s as well. So, I think looking at charts like this, I mean, obviously short-term price action, who knows? I mean, silver clearly has been due for a pullback for a while. I have no idea exactly, you know, short-term price action. As I said before, to

For me, it's more like geometric Brownian motion or akin to a random walk. It's not predictable, so why try to predict it?

Um, but I do think there is, and I've said this for 5 years, I do think there is reason to have metals in your portfolio, especially the last couple of years, because whenever all that macro uncertainty finally does hit and and there's some crisis that the Fed has to respond to, while metals will likely drop, they will also likely recover quicker than stocks, just like they did, you know, in the 70s and then just like they did in 2008-2009. So I think that alone is justification. It's not to say like they can't drop. It's just that if there is if there is some type of event that happens and the Fed prints, metals should do fine coming out of that as well.

So, for me, what I think is going to happen with metals, I think they're going to see some type of pullback, consolidation, uh, sometime starting in the first or second quarter, maybe even starting now, I guess, but sometime in early 2026, and then maybe consolidate for a year or two, and then I would envision them going higher again um, into the into the end of the decade, basically, cuz I I sort of see these as as lasting about about 10 years. and and you could argue that the current bull market um is is not quite 10 years old.

>> So, just final question before we get off uh the air. Uh Ben, so just today we're speaking on the 29th of uh December. It's the first Monday back from the uh from last week's holiday season before the new year. So, I'm seeing a bunch of headlines like this pop up on my feed. Experts want the S&P 500 is broken. And yes, I know today is a big down day for everything. Gold's down. Treasury yields uh actually treasuries are up so cuz yields are down. Um, and then Bitcoin's down, uh, NASDAQ's down. So, you know, you're seeing a lot of bearish titles and headlines pop up all over the news. Is this a contra indicator that sentiment has kind of shifted towards more bearish outlook uh, by year end or do you think it's more more or less aligned with how you're feeling what we talked about?

>> I mean, it's really interesting that people say that cuz the S&P 500 as of the day we're recording this video is is within striking distance of an all-time high, you know?

>> Yeah, fair enough. So like it is it is difficult. I mean there's what the news says and then there's like what's actually going on in the charts. I mean I think there's a lot of negative sentiment in crypto because you know we we kind of ended the year with not the euphoria that a lot of people were expecting and I think that sentiment has kind of bled over into some other asset classes. Um, I think the other issue with metals going parabolic is that while stocks are still doing well, there are prior times in history when when metals go parabolic, it it's not really a great thing for the stock market. Um, because it kind of signals something underlying is going on uh that needs attention.

So, like I think what what I could see happening, David, is is some type of a correction by the stock market in early 2026 making people think it's truly over, but it it still might not be over because normally when it is over, people you don't see those news articles before it's over. [laughter] Um, so I don't know. I mean, I I'm not saying there can't be corrections. Absolutely there can be. Um, but I I I I think it it would be don't become too deterministic, right? don't become too deterministic about about what the outcome has to be cuz there I mean there are there are even even if we do go into a recession um there are plenty of recessions historically that were just 20% draw downs you know and we actually got one of those in in April. So who really knows who really knows what's going to happen. Um we'll just we all do the best we can.

>> Ben knows because Ben uh has been pretty accurate in his call so far especially calling for the uh at least midcycle peak. We'll find out if it's actually the current cycle peaked in um October. But that timing was pretty spot on, so I have to call you out for that. And Bitcoin's down 125 from 125 to basically 87 since pretty much the exact month that you called that it would be. So, uh props to you, Ben. What can we look forward to on your channel um into 2026? What are you working on? Where can we find you?

>> Yeah, I mean, no, I mean, my YouTube channel is great. Um Twitter and then into the cryptoverse.com. Then I'm I'm launching more of like a a different more of an institutional thing like Benjamin Cowan.com where it allows me to go speak at conferences. I finally David Yeah, dude. You'll be happy to know I finally broken in the barrier. I was like, "All right, I'll finally go speak speak at conferences." Now,

>> are you going to wear a suit?

>> Uh sometimes sometimes, [laughter] but um so I am I'm starting to branch out uh a little bit, but yeah, I mean I I think it's important for Dave. I mean, D, I think it's really important for people that kind of found their way into markets >> that started off in crypto. I think it's good for them to know that they can make money in things besides crypto, you know. Um, and I know you you talk a lot about other things on your channel. You talk about Bitcoin, talk about crypto, but you also talk about metals, you talk about the stock market, and there's always a bull market somewhere. So, you know, if you're feeling down about current markets, just know there's always a bull market somewhere. You can always make money. You just have to know where to look. Um, so hopefully hopefully we can we can continue to try to do that.

>> Great. Well, I'm happy for your success. I'm happy you're branching out into uh different different things and yeah, we'll look forward to more collaborations in 2026. People can check out Ben Cowan links down below. So, I'll put your social links and your channel links down below in the description. Thanks so much, Ben. Happy New Year once again. We'll see you soon.

>> Thanks for having me.

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