Bitcoin could reach a local bottom in October before staging a recovery toward $130,000 by the 2028 halving, according to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.
Klippsten’s outlook is based partly on Bitcoin’s historical cycle structure. He noted that BTC peaked above $126,000 in early October 2025 and said previous market cycles have generally produced a major low roughly 12 months after a bull-market peak.
At the same time, Klippsten cautioned against treating historical patterns as a precise forecasting model, given the relatively small number of completed Bitcoin cycles.
Under his current scenario, Bitcoin could fall toward $57,000, with a deeper move to around $53,000 also possible, before beginning a stronger recovery. Klippsten expects BTC to eventually return to approximately $130,000 by the time of the 2028 Bitcoin halving.
The forecast provides additional detail on comments Klippsten made in a June interview, when he argued that the current Bitcoin cycle could turn earlier than in previous periods.
One factor behind that view is the unusually large amount of BTC controlled by long-term holders. Around 14.7 million Bitcoin was held by long-term investors at the time, potentially reducing the amount of supply available to trade on the open market.
While a high concentration of long-term holdings can provide structural support, Klippsten’s latest forecast suggests that Bitcoin may still need to undergo another meaningful correction before establishing a durable bottom.
Klippsten Says Altcoins Are Losing Ground to Bitcoin and TradFi
Klippsten also took a skeptical view of the broader altcoin market, arguing that most alternative cryptocurrencies are no longer credible competitors to Bitcoin.
He described altcoins as “effectively dead” in that role and said the most realistic long-term path for cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance is greater integration with traditional finance.
In Klippsten’s view, centralized crypto companies are particularly likely to move in that direction. As regulators impose clearer rules on exchanges, lenders and other intermediaries, he expects many crypto businesses to increasingly resemble conventional financial institutions.
That could eventually blur the distinction between centralized crypto platforms and traditional exchanges or banks.
However, Klippsten identified Hyperliquid as one of the few crypto projects that could continue to outperform the broader market.
Hyperliquid generated approximately $5.9 million in revenue last week, placing it fifth among DeFi protocols by revenue, according to DefiLlama.
Its native HYPE token has also significantly outperformed Bitcoin this year. HYPE has gained around 130% since the start of the year, while Bitcoin has declined approximately 28% over the same period, according to KuCoin data.
The divergence highlights a broader shift in the altcoin market, where capital is increasingly concentrating in a smaller number of projects with strong liquidity, revenue or institutional interest.
Market maker Wintermute made a similar observation in a July report, saying the growing influence of institutional investors has changed the structure of crypto rallies.
Rather than producing broad-based gains across hundreds of tokens, recent market moves have become narrower and more selective. Liquidity has increasingly flowed toward larger assets and projects favored by institutional investors, while trading activity in smaller and more speculative tokens has weakened.
If that trend continues, the next crypto market cycle could look substantially different from earlier periods, with Bitcoin retaining its dominant role while a smaller group of high-liquidity altcoins captures most of the remaining investor demand.
