Supply: thinning, quietly
Post-halving dynamics from 2024 are fully in play. Miners are getting half the rewards they used to, and many are scaling back or consolidating. Meanwhile, according to CryptoQuant, exchange reserves are at their lowest since 2018. Coins just aren’t moving like they used to.
A lot of BTC is now effectively out of circulation and locked in long-term wallets, ETFs, corporate treasuries. We can see it in the on-chain data: the active supply is thin, it isn’t a supply shock yet, but it’s close.
Demand: still there, but slower
ETF flows paused last quarter of 2025, but they didn’t collapse. That’s a big change from earlier cycles. Over $50 billion went into spot Bitcoin ETFs in the past year, and most of that capital hasn’t left. Allocators are treating BTC like an asset, not a trade.
Then there’s Strategy. Still sitting on 430K+ BTC and recently raised $1.4 billion in cash. As JPMorgan pointed out, if they’re not forced to sell and its market new asset value (mNAV) – a metric assessing crypto treasury companies’ valuation – holds above 1, they become a backstop. Add in the pending MSCI ruling in January (which decides whether crypto-heavy firms get to stay in major indices), and you’ve got real market structure in play.
2026 outlook
The outlook isn’t unanimous, but most serious forecasts now sit in the $120K to $170K range. The outlook is based on ETF flows, constrained supply, and improved liquidity conditions.
Fundstrat is more aggressive, pushing $400K+. JPMorgan’s volatility-adjusted gold model suggests $170K is in play if Bitcoin continues to attract capital the way commodities do (especially gold). But few are pricing in euphoria. Most are looking at this as a grind upward.