How We Got Here

Happy Bitcoin Friday! — Jul. 11, 2025

How We Got Here

Two weeks ago, I wrote: Bullish July?

Bitcoin had been coiling at prices just above $100,000 since early May.

We hit the mid-year mark and what was typically the back half of the bull market typically seen during the bitcoin halving cycle. Conditions were present for the mania seen each cycle. Now, we’re in the mania.

How did we get here?

The Halving

First—until proven otherwise, the four-year halving cycle is in play.

If history is any indicator, we have 6-8 months left of the bull market.

Look back at September 2024.

Last year, the US spot bitcoin ETFs triggered an early, short term, bull run before markets settled near $60,000 through the summer.

I started talking about it closer to October and November. The bitcoin halving in April was more important than the ETFs.

Historically, the pricing impacts of the halving hit during the 6 to 18 month period following the halving during each four year market cycle.

Halvings drive bitcoin’s scarcity and the supply vs. demand impact is rarely understood by newcomers until much later. ETFs were a cherry on top to this cycle.

Institutional Support

Don’t get me wrong—the ETFs were big for this cycle. They provided a legitimacy we haven’t yet seen for bitcoin and the broader industry.

While bitcoin doesn’t need Wall Street or regulatory approval to operate and be successful, the ETFs did give a green light to anyone on the fence.

Small family offices and retail drove the bulk of the initial ETF inflows but we hit a point where, for example, BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF became the most successful ETF launch in history—surpassing well beyond $70 billion in AUM.

Retail and small family office interest is now spilling over to larger institutions. The larger bitcoin’s market cap, the more accessible it is to larger institutions. These institutions simply help to build a higher floor.

Mania

This is the “fun” part.

It can be overwhelming if it’s your first cycle and, even if it’s your second or third cycle, we’re at levels we’ve never seen before.

… & Noise

We’re at the part in the story where the crypto industry and ecosystem takes credit for their own successes and plan to vanquish bitcoin long term.

They’ll forget that bitcoin is the market-maker in crypto and that bitcoin is different from all other cryptocurrencies. It’s the largest computing network in the world. It’s truly decentralized. It’s a digital commodity, controlled by no one, accessible to everyone. It’s not a company or non-profit org and it doesn’t purport to be a “world computer” or the “future of finance” or anything that all the other altcoins will claim about themselves.

Bitcoin is a protocol that stores value. It gets adopted where and when it can be useful and its use case depends on the user.

Expect to see more hype and headlines around altcoins, stablecoins, and bitcoin-related equity plays than bitcoin itself in the coming months.

Less Is More

The bitcoin bull market is also coinciding with an abundance of interest from tradfi markets. This is a rough estimate based on available info but it shows you the types of institutions holding bitcoin:

Among these categories of players are public companies like Strategy. While they dominate in terms of bitcoin holdings, there are now almost 150 public companies with bitcoin holdings. We thought the institutions were coming last cycle but it took time. Now, they’re here and the number of companies is growing.

With this renewed institutional interest in bitcoin, there’s a lot of new and different ways the retail investor can gain bitcoin exposure.

In some senses that’s great to see. In others, however, it shows just how distracting and fiat-minded tradfi markets can be. An advent of new “bitcoin treasury companies” are among these new institutional players. These are holding companies that buy bitcoin and offer some kind of premium on the assets to investors. None of this is a substitute for owning bitcoin outright via self-custody.

What do I do during bull markets?

Nothing different.

I continue to buy bitcoin (every other week these days), hold the majority of bitcoin in self-custody and maintain a relatively conservative, concentrated, strategy when it comes to bitcoin-related equities (currently holding only ARKB, IBIT, FDIG).

I’m interested in similar AI and data center equities such as DLR and DELL but I keep it pretty simple when it comes to gaining bitcoin exposure with my traditional investments.

Bitcoin will last.

Companies will come and go.

Altcoins will come and go.

Filter out the noise.

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Enjoy the weekend!

I am not an investment or financial advisor. All opinions expressed are mine alone. Read the full DISCLAIMER on the About page.

HODL on Garth.