CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju says Bitcoin has entered a more mature bull cycle that could deliver a 3-5x gain — a deliberately tempered projection that trades away the 10x parabolic rallies of earlier eras in exchange for milder drawdowns, as institutional ownership and a much larger market cap dampen both the booms and the busts.
By Marcus Johnson | September 23, 2026
“I expect this Bitcoin bull cycle to deliver 3-5x rather than another 10x+ parabolic rally, followed by a milder bear market,” Ju wrote in a post on Tuesday, adding: “When Bitcoin was smaller and retail dominated, hot money fueled explosive rallies and 80% crashes. Today, a much larger market and growing institutional ownership changes that math.”
Bitcoin trades near 85,600 USD at the time of writing, according to the latest CoinGecko data, up sharply from around 75,600 USD on September 15, with a market capitalization near 1.75 trillion USD. The recovery above 86,000 USD earlier this week marked an eight-month high for the largest cryptocurrency.
Why 3-5x and not 10x
Ju’s argument centers on scale. Earlier Bitcoin cycles started from far smaller valuations, allowing comparatively modest capital inflows to produce huge percentage moves. As Bitcoin’s capitalization has grown, each incremental unit of capital produces a smaller percentage response — a relationship Ju has tracked for months through realized capitalization, which values each coin at the price when it last moved and serves as an estimate of the aggregate on-chain cost basis of holders.
In July, Ju estimated that roughly 697 billion USD of realized-cap growth had produced a 689% gain during the current cycle, while around 2.7 billion USD generated gains exceeding 55,000% during Bitcoin’s early years. At that time he suggested another parabolic rally could require more than 1 trillion USD of additional realized capital. The new 3-5x forecast takes a more measured view of what investors should expect.
It is worth stressing what the forecast is not: Ju did not specify the exact price or date from which the 3-5x calculation should be measured. It describes the scale he expects from the full cycle — not a claim that Bitcoin will triple or quintuple from its current level near 85,600 USD.
The on-chain evidence behind the call
Ju pointed to Bitcoin’s market-value-to-realized-value ratio, or MVRV, as a central piece of evidence. MVRV compares market capitalization with realized capitalization; a ratio below one indicates the average holder is underwater on that framework. According to Ju, MVRV never dropped below one during the current cycle — even through this year’s deep drawdown — meaning Bitcoin avoided the kind of broad holder capitulation that marked previous bear-market bottoms.
CryptoQuant’s PnL Index, which combines MVRV with net unrealized profit and loss and holder profitability measures, is producing less extreme cycle tops and bottoms, Ju said, with bottoms forming at progressively higher levels of aggregate profitability. Its 365-day moving average is now forming what he described as a meaningful inflection, and the firm’s Bull-Bear Market Cycle Indicator had already moved into bullish territory earlier this year — its first such signal since March 2023.
Realized capitalization itself continues to rise, which in CryptoQuant’s framework signals fresh money entering the network even as price gains become less explosive. In August, Bitcoin’s realized cap added more than 4.6 billion USD in a single week — although CryptoQuant contributor Darkfost cautioned at the time that the 30-day growth rate was still only 0.4%.
Ju’s latest post adds two holder groups to the picture: “OG whales,” the large early holders, have stopped selling, while futures-market whales built sizable long positions near Bitcoin’s recent bottom. Those classifications depend on CryptoQuant’s wallet-labeling methodology, so they should be read as analytical estimates rather than proof about every early holder.
Institutional demand is the structural change
Ju ties declining cycle volatility partly to growing institutional ownership. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs provide one measurable proxy: the funds attracted 433 million USD on September 18 after heavy withdrawals earlier in the week, and inflows continued as Bitcoin cleared resistance above 82,000 USD and then 86,000 USD — although HashKey researcher Tim Sun cautioned that ETF flows often confirm an existing market move rather than cause it.
Corporate treasury demand has also expanded. Bernstein estimated in June that ETFs and treasury buyers had provided around 12 billion USD of combined Bitcoin inflows during 2026, with treasury companies accounting for most of that demand — an estimate from sell-side research, not an on-chain measure of total institutional ownership.
Ju frames the changing holder base as a trade-off: deeper institutional participation makes another 10x move harder, but it also reduces the likelihood of the roughly 80% bear-market collapses of earlier cycles. “Giving up the 10x parabola also means giving up the 80% crash,” he wrote.
The verdict
The claim remains forward-looking, and 2026 has already demonstrated that large drawdowns are still possible: Bitcoin reached a record near 126,000 USD in October 2025 before falling toward 60,000 USD this year. Ju’s own outlook has shifted as on-chain data improved — in late May he warned the bear market could extend into early 2027 before his indicators turned. For holders, the message is less a price target than a regime description: Bitcoin’s cycles are compressing as the asset matures, and planning around 2017-style multiples may be as outdated as planning around 2017-style crashes.
Market snapshot (CoinGecko, Sept. 23): BTC 85,636 USD, ETH 2,727 USD, SOL 117 USD.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Crypto assets are volatile and readers should do their own research.
3-5x on an 85k base is still 250k+ bitcoin and people acting like Ju turned bearish lol. read the actual post
thank you. the milder bear market part is what everyone skips. i lived through 80% drawdowns, ill take 3x with a shallow trough any day
A 3-5x off the current 85k range still lands Bitcoin somewhere between 250k and 430k. That is an enormous cycle. Ju is right that the realized cap math makes another 10x nearly impossible at 1.75t market cap.
Your 250k-430k math checks out but Ju has never called a top in advance. I read this as a range he would be comfortable with rather than an actual projection.
he never gave a starting point for the 3-5x tho. could be measured from the cycle low. everyone treating this as a top call from 85k is just guessing
if you measure from the cycle low like he usually does, a chunk of that 3-5x is already priced in. the forward part of the call is way smaller than the headline suggests
milder bear market is the underrated part of this take. ill take 3x with a 35% drawdown over 10x followed by another 80% crater any day of the week
funny how everyone cites mvrv as the discipline card now. historically this zone tops the cycle within months, not years. ju is basically saying enjoy the second half
1.75 trillion cap means every doubling needs trillion scale inflows. the math he lays out on institutional ownership is hard to argue with