Is The Bitcoin Bull Market Over? Coin Bureau CEO Reveals His 2025 Price Targets!

I think the four year cycle, the metronome that we've had since the beginning of bitcoin is no more. ETH has been a massive redemption arc. Now I think it's definitely going to go and go above the recent 5k high. It's like if you were an OG, you got into bitcoin for other reasons, not just to make money. And now you've seen it's been co opted by Tradfi and now it's my opportunity to exercise my right to sell it and live a life of dreams.

All right, it's a great pleasure to have nick Pukran, the CEO of Coin Bureau, joining us here on Cointelegraph's YouTube channel today to check all things markets and all the biggest headlines of the past few weeks and of course a little bit of a prediction for what lies ahead for the remainder of 2025. It's hard to believe that we're basically into Q4 and I think let's tee it up. First up, Nick, you're well known for your market takes on X in particular, I think you are the, you know, the resident market expert there. How are you seeing things play out in terms of Bitcoin's price, Ethereum's price and the overall crypto majors at this point of this bull run?

Right, first of all, thanks for having me, Gareth, here on X for Chain Reaction. I'm happy to be here. So let's dive in right with us with the markets right now and answer the proverbial question, is it over or are we so back? Let's start with bitcoin, right? Literally two weeks ago we had, coming out of the Fed Jackson Hole meeting, we had the markets on fire because of the adjustment in terms of the inflation targeting metrics. And we had the massive rally for bitcoin and Ethereum breaking through all time highs and the markets were, were euphoric. And then over the weekend it started to wilter away and then we had whales dumping on the market, market dump in bitcoin to ironically switch into Ethereum, which is interesting. And yeah, now it's rolled into this continual whale selling. Dumping on the markets has taken bitcoin lower and it has kind of taken the market by surprise into September. So August ended as a negative month, unfortunately, unlike the past history when August has been positive. Now we rolling into September, right. And September generally has been Bitcoin's worst month historically in terms of performance. It's, it's generally also the September effect is something in Tradfire as well. So now we're going into a potentially down September and it seems as the market is positioned for it to be a down September. It seems the sentiment across CT is down September. And you know how it usually goes when, when the market thinks one way and the sentiment is, is one, you know, direction, it usually goes the other way. Right. The cons, the, the, the consensus view that doesn't usually play out. I think that in terms of bitcoin now and its positioning, I think, well, it comes back to the question around where we are in the cycle. You know, do you believe in the four year cycle? Is the four year cycle still driven, is it still driven by the halving or are there other factors that may not be playing out right now? And these are all big questions in and of themselves. I think that bitcoin itself is likely based on macro factors to top sometime towards the end of the year. So we're saying probably November, December, which would kind of line up to the long, to the longest time frame prior since a halving which was last, last cycle halving. If you believe that the halving drives the cycle, which I don't think so, but let's just assume it does. So that's about November top. And in terms of bitcoin top predictions are usually around, I think mine is about 150k by the end of the year. And at that time generally the, the view is how crypto markets move is once bitcoin is topped, people go and look for higher returns down the altcoin spectrum right into the longer tail of the risk curve down coin market cap rankings. And then the rotation begins. We've already started to see some of that rotation in the alt space, but that's been very localized to Ethereum. And this brings us to Ethereum's performance which has been a banger over the past two, three months, right? It was cast for dead like four months ago it was, everyone was saying it was the most hated trade, no one wanted to back it. And all of a sudden Tom Lee and his and his mates over there in tradfile land decided to CTO Ethereum and saved it from the bottoms. And it literally has had a ripper run. And, and it's obviously a lot of it has been the digital asset treasury companies. But not just that some of the ETF flows have been crazy in terms of they've been even higher than bitcoins not just on a relative basis for market cap weighted, but in a total basis in general, which is crazy. So ETH has been a massive redemption arc had been on a massive redemption arc since then and it's now I think it's definitely going to go and go above its 5k. The recent 5k high. It was a strong resistance. When that will happen? I think in the next month or two, I think September could be a bit choppy short of anything happening. We will have to wait to see what happens with the Fed. I think that the consensus is there's going to be a cut. Well, 95 to 99 certain. But the more important question is what happens subsequent to that in terms of what's the monetary policy going to be? How many cuts are we going to get before the end of the year? How dovish is the Fed likely to be? How much influence is Trump going to exert over the Fed? Is. He's already trying to. He got two board governors resigning or. No one was fired, one was resigned. He's trying to exert his influence over the Fed. More, more dovish Fed. More, more liquidity into the markets. Liquidity obviously drives risk assets and crypto is one of the most sensitive risk assets. So I expect to see markets sideways chop for September and then as we roll into the final Q Q4 of the year, you'll start to see the effects of that liquidity flow into the markets. And once bitcoin stopped, yeah, we all do hope for some sort of an altcoin season after the top in Q4 into next year. But as I've said many times before, I don't think we're going to have the same kind of altcoin season we've seen in previous cycles. This massive altcoin season when all where all coins rally, it's going to be quite localized in particular niches and sectors. And coins, those that have the best, you know, narrative for retail, those that have access through financial products like ETFs and indeed those who have, you know, who have digital asset treasury companies which could bid those coins. So yeah, I mean, I know I've said a lot there. I don't know how many more of those of those strands you want to pull on, but that's my view for the markets for the next say four or five months.

I want to pull on all of them, to be honest with you. But yeah, perhaps let's just talk a little bit about like bitcoin in particular, as you mentioned, a lot of people kind of saying this is a bit of a down September. I think everyone except Adam back, I think he's always pretty bullish. But yeah, your general thoughts on why we might be seeing so much selling.

At this point right now what's driving the softness in bitcoin is OG whales are selling. Right? That's what's been taking it down especially since the Jackson Hole summit where Jerome spoke. It should have on the face have been very bullish for markets and it pumped the equity markets. But because of this whale selling that took it out the wind out of the sales of bitcoin. I think in terms of September generally, as we know the September effect is also in tradfi and I think there's a lot of wait and see right now. And the tradfi allocators who usually look at it in different buckets of risk buckets, but put bitcoin and crypto in one risk bucket, we'll want to see more guidance in terms of what comes out of that fomc. So I think it's right now what's driving bitcoin is macro uncertainty and then it depends on how many of these whales are going to continue selling. In terms of why these whales are selling, that's also an interesting question because I think many of the Bitcoin OGs, there's been a lot of discussion, you know, it's, it's. These guys have held like for years, man, Decades, right? Some of them decades which must be strong diamond handed individuals then that to think about it. But I think so the one that I believe like a month ago but just sold out to Galaxy, probably wanted to buy a private island, some yachts or something. Whereas the most recent one I think was just trying to swap into eth, which is an ETH conviction trade. So I think if you've been holding Bitcoin since 2015, 2011 and it's at a hundred thousand dollars and something, then you like and, and they're also making the calculation in terms of like how much more can bitcoin really rally? Let's assume cycle top the most optimistic predictions for the cycle top 250. 200, 250,000. How likely is that? Do you really, did you really care? You've held it for so long. You, you. And also if you were an OG from those days and this I've seen this discussion as well on crypto Twitter. It's like if you were an og, you got in for bitcoin, you got into bitcoin for other reasons, not just to make money. So you got in because you were initially drawn to it in terms of the ideals of financial freedom and permissionless cash and all that kind of stuff. And now you've seen okay, well I feel it's become more, I feel like it's been co opted by Tradfi and now it's my opportunity to exercise my right to sell it and live a life of dreams and retire. So I don't know. That's, that's what I've seen the narrative is.

Yeah, I've seen that narrative and honestly I think a lot of that is probably correct and some of these people really do have thousands and thousands of Bitcoin, you know so to offload some of that stash into dollars is interesting. And yeah, the bitcoin to ETH trade was, was even more interesting for me. We could talk about Bitcoin at link so I'm going to leave it there. But let's talk about Ethereum. I mean obviously there's been sort of murmurings of altcoin season starting because of how Ethereum has been on Iran in the last six weeks to two months. And I think the biggest catalyst in terms of headlines has been you know, Tom Lee with Bit Mine and then obviously Joe, Joe Lubin and Joseph Shalon with Sharplink Gaming buying a load of ETH for these, these new Ethereum treasury companies. Firstly, what are your thoughts on Ethereum treasury companies? Because in my mind, you know Bitcoin is, is quite purely a monetary protocol. Ethereum is many different things. They're not quite cut from the same cloth and they don't have the same value proposition. Why are these guys buying so much Ethereum in your opinion?

Well, I think that there's the benefit obviously for them as, as investors, Joe Lubin at least the guys on the shopping side. They're you know, Ethereum ecosystem community guys and they wanted to and it benefits them in general. Tom Lee is a surprise though because if I he's been well known in the past for being a bitcoin bull, right? Always in bitcoin and Bit Mine itself is a bitcoin mining company which is interesting that just converted into an E max max bidding treasury company. I think the for, for one difference for Ethereum versus Bitcoin as a. If you accumulate in ETH is that you can obviously stake it so you can get yield from it. Right? So there's benefits in that you can also utilize. You can also use the ETH and defi protocols and earn yield in other ways. There are interesting strategies you can employ and I think there's also some at least on the sharpening side as opposed to just being a ETH treasury company, just a buying crypto buying Ethereum that's the only function potential synergies. I mean they could do stuff with the company itself. The company could potentially consider using some of its cash reserves to either invest in ETH or to also uplift the ecosystem. Some of these digital asset treasury companies are doing that. So there is a, there is a clearer incentive to do this for these ETH treasury companies than just Bitcoin which is just an asset that is digital gold. Right? And that's what it is. And I guess the question also comes down to if Ethereum gets used a lot again, will it ever go into deflationary and deflationary asset which then obviously way if it's deflationary, it's the worth over a long time period is worth more than just a bitcoin which is always going to be inflationary, although it will taper off. So there's those, there's those unique use cases and investment theses for Ethereum. But I think that as it comes down to the, the dats themselves in the Ethereum land, I mean I, I don't, I don't exactly know what the MNAV is. So that's the multiple to, that's the value on some of these. I think bit mine is still strong and to be honest, bit mine is now what, 2% of all of ETH supply. Which is crazy. And I think just it's a lot that's testament to, to be honest Tom Lee as well in terms of like being a, a, you know, the, the, the, the saint, the saint of the Ethereum land basically out there on CNBC every day shilling eth. That helps. That definitely does help because if you're out there on tradfi media and you're known by tradfi then it helps the narrative of ETH is investable for as a tradfi asset. So he's helped on that front and he, and he's helped, you know, push forward the idea of these digital asset treasury companies in the Tradfi. Tradfi land. But I think in terms of the, the question around some of these other digital asset treasury companies, I believe Sharplink was close to 1 on the MNAV scale and I don't know about some of the other ones like Eilla and some of these new. I think if I recall one of them, I think it was eat zilla or something like two weeks ago the, the, the price completely cratered because of the fact that they issued a lot of share. They issued, they wanted to dilute their shareholders in the price crash. And if you've been holding the dad shares you would have made a loss when eat actually rallied and that was because just the shareholders didn't like it. And some of these ETH dads have performed very well. And if it, if the MNAV falls a low a lot before below one, then you know it's, it doesn't make sense to issue, you can't issue any more shares, you just diluting your shelves even more to buy any more eth. And a lot of the not bit mine but some of the other ETH treasury companies are struggling on that. So yeah, I think it's, it just comes down to how they pitch themselves, how they differentiate themselves from bit mine and whether they can maintain that MNAV in a positive territory.

I wanted to get your thoughts on Bitcoin treasury companies in general. I, I, we spoke to Pete Rizzo earlier this week on Chain Reaction and obviously he's, he's now the president@bitcointreasuries.net, which is a fantastic sort of data resource. Just mapping out all the numbers here and strategy are way up top with like 600,000 bitcoin and then the next highest on the, on the list is one of the big US mining firms holding 50,000 Bitcoin and then you know, it just gets less and less from there. But in terms of the ETH Treasuries versus Bitcoin Treasuries, do you think it's going to be the ETH Treasuries meta from here on out or do you think it's going to fizzle out very quickly and it's going to go back to, to Bitcoin Treasuries being the, the big spoken about thing because it's been a, it's been a trend now for about a year already I think and I feel like it's, it's losing a little bit of steam.

I don't think it's necessarily going to rotate into the vogue being the ETH Treasuries themselves. I think Treasuries in general, my personal view is the more that they, the attention has been diluted from them and the more that come out, the less the ones that are on the margins are going to be able to actually go out there and issue shares or get debt. So they're basically saturating the market and the strategy is a gold standard in terms of debts. Right. They had the best terms on their converts when they issued them. They got the best debt financing. They've got ST Sailor there who's the most diamond handed individual there is They've been, he's been through be cycles before and I think that they'll maintain it, they'll be able to maintain a positive an MNAV above one and, and even then like I think two weeks ago like Sailor came out a strategy came out with this in the earnings call with an adjusted guidance for their, at the money issuance right that they said they wouldn't issue if it was below 2.5 but I believe there was a kerfuffle around that last week as well. But the point of the matter is that strategy, you know, it's set and it's, it's set and it's got a relative moat. A lot of these other ones are going to struggle and they're going to compete with each other and then the more that, the more they come to the market the more they're going to, the more they're going to dilute the opportunities for the others and the more they're going to saturate the market and these, these companies are going to struggle to find the financing required and some of the altcoin ones will be struggling even, even more. So I don't think it's necessarily, necessarily the market's going to view eth ones better than a Bitcoin. I think it's just going to, it's going to wrote, it's going to gravitate to the ones that have demonstrated demonstrably basically had success which is the likes of Bit Mine and Strategy and then the others may struggle to, to get that attention because yeah, I just think it's just too many out there right now.

I agree with you. I think there's too many and it, it really comes down to either having that first mover advantage like Strategy and, and Bit Mine did with, with Ethereum and then having a very unique sort of situational setting like Made a Planet in Japan. Speaking about politics, the Trumps have been, they've been at it all year really. Last week World Liberty Financials Token came out. You know, their team reached out to us as well about a potential interview and if it kind of fizzled out, I think maybe there was some hesitance to talk talk ahead of the launch and everything. But that was pretty interesting. Bubble Max came out with some interesting data and basically they said, you know, surprisingly the way that they, they laid out how the treasury sort of allocations would work very much matched the, the wallets that they were seeing the distributions of the token to when they actually launched the token. So they actually did what they kind of said what they were doing if you look at the bubble maps, but they've launched this American bitcoin went live on the Nasdaq yesterday as well. So obviously the Trump sort of bitcoin mining operation that they're doing in collaboration with Hut 8 is now live. They've got many other fingers in many other pies, but there's just no stopping these guys. What do you think about that?

It's actually quite funny, Gareth, because literally two days ago I just, I interviewed both sex from, from World Liberty with an open mind basically because I wanted to learn more about the project, right? I wanted to know exactly what is trying to differentiate itself. Is it just an AAVE fork with governance? Is it just a stable coin issuer? And they made some good points. Look, I mean, so firstly come back to the question around what they said in terms of the bubble maps. You know that is true. Like I mean in the sense that it's all there on chain and it's transparent. I think that yes, there is concentration of insider wallets, but, but that was known from the get go, right? There was known what the distribution would have been in terms of all of the meme coin rugs we've seen over the past year. It's, you know, I don't think you can put even, even put it in that bucket. They might to make it very clear as well in that interview that there was no association at all with World Liberty with the Trump meme coin. So I mean, not saying anything about the Trump meme coin itself, but that's what they said. And it's interesting, obviously this is a project that started just prior to Trump getting elected. They have got this USD1 stablecoin which is one of the fastest growing stable coins right now in the market. And they said that how it differentiated itself from the other stable coins on the market right now is it has that governance components with the wlfi, which. Correct me if I'm wrong, Garth, but I don't think any of the other stable coins right now at least maybe on the, maybe on the decentralized side with the maker maker community with dai, but I don't think any of the other large fiat backed stable coins, the likes of Tether and USDC Circle, have any governance components for the state of the stakeholders. So there is that, there is that kind of like governance component to the token. But yeah, I mean they're going to get the questions around, okay, who are the biggest insiders who control the wallet, the Trump back in and all of that and how much of that how much of that helped them get off the ground. So they're going to face those questions in terms of Trump getting involved in. I think there is the question, okay, now we've gone complete, you know, 180 in terms of what crypto was before Trump got elected to now literally Trump's a meme coin death with Trump token rights or whatever. I know, not literally him, but that he's launched a meme coin, right? Just literally before he got elected, he launched a meme coin. And my concern around crypto is it seems as if it's become even more politicized post election. Right. To one particular side. Whereas crypto is never meant to be political. Right. It's always meant to be decentralized, permissionless, everyone for all creeds, politics, races, religions. So it's, it's unfortunate that now it seems as if it is like, and Trump's, you know, his family wants to get involved in it, they want to make money on it. American bitcoin, all this, they're free to do that. It's just like now I think it's been very much associated that and I think it's. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think now most of Trump's wealth is in crypto, which is crazy to think, right? So it's. Yeah, I, I guess it's like because he is such a polarizing figure, it basically may, some people may look at it and be like, okay, well, this is cryptos for only one side of the political spectrum and all this kind of stuff. But, yeah, I mean, look, at the end of the day, we got what we wanted in, in terms of positive crypto regulations, right? He's delivered more, way more than any of us were really expecting. Think about all the executive orders, think about the SEC coming out and saying things like, you know, tokens are not secure, most tokens are not securities you can launch in the US Dev should build here, the CFTC opening up crypto trading to US citizens on offshore platform spot trading and then also Genius Act, I think about that and now the Clarity act working its way through. So, you know, is it, Would it be better if that the President wasn't personally involved in crypto ventures while he was in office? Ideally, no. But at the end of the day, what we got in from a regulatory perspective was immensely positive. So now that's what I think.

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think at the end of the day, it can't get worse than what it was. And if there was to be some sort of A, a course correction and you know, a huge sort of political change in the US in the next, you know, four years or whatever. It can't get worse than what it was. It really can't. And I think most of this legislation, when it does go through, will be hugely positive for the industry. And you know, it's, it's almost looking now as if, you know, it'll be the place to be. And to be honest, like I've said this to so many people this year, I'm actually really sad I don't live in the United States at the moment because I feel like that's where the most action is, is happening, you know, and all of the rest of us in Europe or, you know, you're there in, in the Middle east, in Dubai, there's a lot happening, there's a lot of conferences happening. But like all the juicy stuff has been happening in the States.

Yeah. Especially as it relates to the, you know, the equity markets now as well with these debts and with all these other opportunities.

I'm curious just your thoughts on like this whole sort of narrative about like the four year cycles dead. I think that has come to fruition now. I'm not quite sure when this sort of cycle top comes in. You're a lot better placed than I am to talk about this stuff. I'm not a markets reporter or anything like that. That's not my background. But you come from a tradfi background so I think you have a much better perspective on this from both a macro perspective and a crypto perspective. But I mean realistically in your own thoughts, and I'm sure you speak to a lot of different traders midway through 2026, end of 2026. When do you see a sort of cycle top before things really retrace from a top in this, in this kind of period?

Well, I guess the first question is like the four year cycle, is it still intact? And that also comes to the questions around what's driving the four year cycle. Is it the halving, is it liquidity flows? Is it just people chasing bitcoin thinking it should be the halving, a self reinforcing, you know, self reinforcing price action. I think that, look, there's no doubt that this, this, the classic four year cycle is no more because of the fact that market dynamics have changed. You've got ETFs, you've got dads, you've got institutions, you've got this massive amounts of liquidity that has now been in bitcoin. Right. So that has elongated the cycle long, it's going to become longer indeed. We now at about the 18 like 17 months post haring. So it's basically a situation where already it's quite elongated out. So I think the four year cycle, the metronome that we've had for the past since, since the beginning of bitcoin is no more. But we still are going to have cycles. We will have a bear market again these people are out there saying it's a super cycle, we're going into a super cycle. I don't think that because at the end of the day I if, if the cycle was driven by something other than the halving, let's say liquidity flows, liquidity expands and contracts. When it contracts again, we go into a. We, you know, generally liquidity comes out of the market and bitcoin sells off. And also I don't, you know, the whole business cycle. I don't think bitcoin has been through a proper hardcore recession, right? I mean there was a 20, there was in the COVID but that wasn't like that was a manufactured man made recession which lasted for what like two, three months. But a proper hardcore recession. You know it was born out of a recession in the 202008 but what would it do in a, in a proper hardcore recession? So I think that the concept of the bit, I think that the concept of the four year, four year cycle is over. It will but we will have another bear market. Bitcoin will fall as is, as is usually happens in a bear market. In terms of the cycle talk timing like I said at the beginning of the stream, I think that we should be targeting end of the year Q1 for Bitcoin and then potentially hopefully have some rotation into alts and give them breathe some life into them. But then again it won't be a massive al quant season that people expect.

Like the likes is so 2026 is, is when the party is over is what you're telling me.

Yeah bro. Gotta, gotta get ready man. But you know time in the markets is the hardest thing ever, right? Because generally people either hold on too long and then they miss it and they or they try to get it. No one can tell you the exact time when it's going to happen. So you can try and have all this, these ideas in terms of cycle top but it usually happens slightly earlier before or after that. Right.

Nick, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to join us. I know that you're incredibly busy. You guys are just as busy as Cointelegraph when it comes to publishing and putting great content out there. And yeah, we're great fans and we love to see what you guys are doing. I appreciate your time. I hope that you're not right and the party isn't over next year, but you probably are right, so act accordingly. This isn't financial advice, of course.

Make the most of it, man. The last few months of the bitcoin bull market are the explosive. And yeah, but thanks, Gareth. Really appreciate. Was great, great chatting to you. And yeah, let's. Let's make that.