For most of 2026, something has felt off. US technology stocks have surged to record highs on AI enthusiasm. The Dow reached an all-time high just this week. Yet Bitcoin, which spent years being sold as the ultimate risk-on asset, has struggled badly. It trades around $63,000 today, down more than 50% from its October 2025 peak, even as equities keep printing records.
That disconnect has puzzled investors who expected Bitcoin to move alongside, or ahead of, the broader risk rally. Now two major asset managers have published outlooks arguing the gap is temporary. What makes their analysis interesting is that Hashdex and Charles Schwab reach the same conclusion through two completely different lines of reasoning.
Neither firm dismisses the real difficulties Bitcoin has faced. The picture is genuinely tough. But both argue that the forces pulling capital away from crypto right now are cyclical rather than permanent, and that the conditions for a reversal are quietly building underneath the weak price action.
The Hashdex Argument: Capital Follows Attention
Samir Kerbage, chief investment officer at Hashdex, frames Bitcoin’s weakness as a story about where money is flowing rather than anything wrong with crypto itself.
“Capital follows attention and narratives,” Kerbage wrote in a midyear outlook. “Crypto has benefited from this in the past but right now, attention is elsewhere. AI infrastructure plays, IPO pipelines, macro positioning around rate expectations, are absorbing the flows.”
The evidence for this rotation is stark. US spot Bitcoin ETFs bled a record $4.5 billion in June, the worst month since the products launched, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for roughly 75% of the outflows. Meanwhile, capital has poured into AI infrastructure and blockbuster tech listings. The money didn’t leave the market. It moved to a different corner of it.
Kerbage’s point is that this rotation has overshadowed several structural developments that continue strengthening crypto’s long-term case. Institutional infrastructure is expanding across banks, brokers, and payment providers. Regulatory clarity in the US is slowly advancing. These foundations keep building even while attention and flows sit elsewhere.
Hashdex’s deeper thesis is that AI and crypto are rivals for capital today but partners in the longer run. The firm argues that “agentic commerce,” where AI agents execute transactions autonomously, will eventually generate demand for programmable, borderless financial infrastructure, exactly what blockchains provide. In that framing, every dollar flowing into AI infrastructure today is laying groundwork for a future where crypto networks become operationally necessary rather than merely speculative.
The weakness in that argument, which Hashdex acknowledges, is timing. The long-term thesis may be correct without telling investors when the short-term rotation actually ends.
The Schwab Argument: It’s Just the Cycle
Jim Ferraioli, Schwab’s director of digital currencies research and strategy, takes a completely different approach. Instead of focusing on capital flows, he looks at Bitcoin’s history.
His argument is that Bitcoin’s prolonged recovery is broadly consistent with previous post-halving periods, even though many investors expected institutional adoption and spot ETFs to permanently break the traditional four-year cycle. In other words, what looks like an anomaly may just be Bitcoin doing what it has always done after a peak.
Ferraioli notes that Bitcoin has historically taken more than a year after bear market bottoms to reclaim levels above the production costs of less efficient miners, which he currently estimates at roughly $95,000. The average investor’s cost basis sits near $80,000. That creates natural selling pressure, because as Bitcoin recovers toward those levels, holders who bought higher look to exit once they break even. The recovery has to grind through those layers of overhead supply.
Ferraioli stopped short of declaring the four-year cycle an ironclad law of markets. But he argued the pattern has become deeply ingrained in investor psychology. “Through enough market lore, the so-called ‘bitcoin halving cycle’ has become a feature of bitcoin,” he said, adding that the impact of each cycle may diminish over time as the asset matures and volatility declines.
His view adds a near-term caution too: Bitcoin’s summer seasonality has historically produced weaker performance, as the institutional bid tends to thin during summer months. That’s another headwind stacked on top of the fundamental ones.
What the Supply Data Shows
Underneath the weak price action, one set of numbers stands out as genuinely unusual, and it supports both firms’ cases.
Bitcoin exchange reserves have fallen to levels not seen since December 2017. Coins are leaving exchanges and moving into cold storage, which typically signals that holders intend to keep them rather than sell. At the same time, long-term holders are accumulating rather than distributing at the fastest pace in years. Whales bought more than 270,000 BTC worth roughly $16.7 billion over the two weeks into early July, even as ETF investors sold.
This is the structural backdrop that makes the “disconnect won’t last” thesis credible. The supply available to sell is shrinking while committed holders accumulate. When demand eventually returns, whether from a rotation out of AI stocks or the natural progression of the halving cycle, it would be meeting an unusually thin available supply. That combination has historically preceded sharp recoveries.
The Case for Caution
It would be a mistake to treat these outlooks as guarantees. Both firms are asset managers with an interest in crypto’s success, and other serious voices disagree.
Citigroup put a number on its bearishness on July 1, cutting its 12-month Bitcoin target to $82,000 from $112,000, its second downgrade of 2026. The bank simultaneously reduced its net ETF inflow assumption for the coming year to zero, from a prior estimate of $10 billion. That’s a direct challenge to the idea that institutional demand is about to return.
The AI trade itself is the wild card. Markets rotate, and valuations bid up on AI enthusiasm will eventually face the gravity of earnings expectations and the math of a crowded trade. Deutsche Bank has forecast the Fed will raise rates twice in 2026. If that plays out and growth stocks come under pressure, speculative capital would need somewhere new to go. Hashdex and Schwab believe crypto would be positioned to absorb those flows. Skeptics believe that moment may be further away, or may not come at all.
There’s already a small hint of the rotation the bulls are hoping for. Memory and semiconductor stocks have started losing momentum, raising the question of whether capital shifts back toward Bitcoin. But one week of softness in AI stocks is not a confirmed trend.
The Bottom Line
The disconnect between record-high stocks and a still-depressed Bitcoin is real, and it has frustrated investors all year. Hashdex and Schwab offer two complementary explanations for why it should prove temporary: capital has rotated into AI and will eventually rotate back, and Bitcoin is simply following its familiar post-halving recovery pattern that takes time to play out.
Both arguments are supported by genuinely unusual supply data. Exchange reserves at multi-year lows and long-term holders accumulating aggressively are exactly the conditions that precede recoveries. But neither firm can say when the turn comes, and Citigroup’s downgrades are a reminder that credible analysts see the reversal as further away, or less certain, than the bulls project.
For investors, the useful takeaway isn’t a price target. It’s the framework. If you believe Bitcoin’s weakness is about attention and cycles rather than broken fundamentals, current levels look like accumulation territory. If you believe the AI trade will keep absorbing capital indefinitely and the four-year cycle is dead, caution makes more sense. The supply data leans toward the first interpretation. The timing, as always, is the part nobody can promise.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk. Always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.
