Forget everything you thought you knew about the four-year halving cycle. That’s the bold bet launched by Grayscale Research, which in a recent note to investors shattered one of the industry’s most entrenched certainties: the belief that the market should follow a predictable pattern of boom and deep correction every four years. According to the digital asset giant, the dynamics have irreversibly changed and Bitcoin is poised to set new all-time highs as early as 2026, defying the severity of a recent 30% pullback that many had hastily labelled the beginning of a crypto winter.
Grayscale’s thesis is not simply an exercise in optimism, but is based on a structural transformation of the market that we are observing in real time: the shift from retail speculation to systematic institutional accumulation. We are no longer facing a rally driven by amateur traders on offshore platforms, but a tectonic movement of capital allocated through Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) and corporate treasuries. The queen proof comes from the impressive numbers of BlackRock’s iShares IBIT Trust, which has tripled its assets since the end of 2024, surpassing the $70 billion under management threshold. When names such as the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund,Harvard University and the State of Texas appear in the shareholder base of a crypto fund, it becomes evident that the ‘risk’ narrative has been replaced by that of the ‘indispensable asset class’. Even Vanguard, the last bastion of traditional financial scepticism, has had to capitulate, opening the doors of crypto ETFs to its clients after snubbing them for years.
This institutional hunger is about to generate an unprecedented liquidity shockwave. Estimates speak of more than 100 new ETFs set to receive the green light from the SEC in the next six months, thanks in part to a regulatory climate in Washington that has suddenly become more temperate. But the real revolution is not only quantitative, it is qualitative. Issuers are no longer content with mere spot exposure; they are building hybrid products that bring the returns of decentralised finance into Wall Street portfolios. The case of Bitwise is emblematic: their proposed ETF on Avalanche does not just hold the token, but plans to invest up to 70 per cent of the assets in staking to generate dividends. It is the ultimate fusion of TradFi and native yield, a concept that would have seemed like heresy to a regulator just a few months ago.
As the market expands to new frontiers, including products on Ethereum, XRP, Dogecoin and even privacy coins like Zcash, we are witnessing a fascinating two-way convergence. On the one hand, traditional finance packs cryptos into ETFs; on the other, giants like BlackRock are preparing to tokenize their trillion-dollar iShares funds to bring them on-chain.
Are we facing the end of the experimental phase and the beginning of full integration?
2026 is a crucial year to find the answer to this question.
Here at this link the interesting report by Grayscale, for those who don’t know it is the historical pioneer of cryptocurrency investments managing tens of billions of dollars:
https://research.grayscale.com/market-commentary/november-2025-what-it-takes-to-hodl
