Bitcoin (BTC) is having a rough week. The cryptocurrency slipped below $88,000 on Thursday, and not in the fun "healthy pullback" way traders like to tweet about. This time it broke through a multi-year trendline that had been holding up every significant rally since 2023. That's the kind of technical damage that makes chart watchers nervous.
But Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson isn't sweating it. Speaking on a Squawk Box Europe segment Tuesday, he laid out why he thinks Bitcoin is still on track to hit $250,000 by late 2026. The short version? We're just clearing out the downside first.
Two Quarters of Pain Before the Gain
Hoskinson's view is that the market is still working through macro pressures like tariff uncertainty and choppy economic momentum. He expects "the next two quarters" to finish clearing the remaining downside before Bitcoin gets back to business climbing toward six figures.
His confidence comes from the post-halving playbook. Historically, Bitcoin tends to show major upside momentum 400 to 600 days after a halving event. That timeline puts 2026 squarely in the sweet spot for another major run. The patterns from previous cycles suggest this isn't wishful thinking but rather how Bitcoin has consistently behaved after supply shocks.
But there's something different this time around, and Hoskinson is quick to point it out: institutional money. BlackRock Inc. (BLK), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), and Morgan Stanley (MS) are all in the game now. Add a crypto-friendly U.S. administration to the mix, and you've got a structural support system that simply didn't exist in earlier cycles.
This Isn't Your 2017 Bitcoin Cycle
Hoskinson emphasized that this cycle looks fundamentally different from the four-year cycles that came before. Previous rallies were driven almost entirely by retail enthusiasm, the kind that peaks when your cousin starts asking about altcoins at Thanksgiving. Now you've got institutional flows, exchange-traded products, and tokenized real-world assets contributing real demand to the market.
That shift matters because it changes the floor. Retail investors panic sell. Institutions accumulate on dips with multi-year time horizons. When Hoskinson calls the next two quarters "downside clearing," he's essentially saying the smart money views this as a buying opportunity, not an exit ramp.
The Technical Picture Looks Grim
Let's talk about what the charts are actually saying, because they're not exactly cheerful. Bitcoin lost the rising multi-year trendline that supported its entire rally structure since 2023. You can see the break on both daily and weekly timeframes, which suggests this isn't just a quick shakeout but a deeper corrective phase.
On the daily chart, Bitcoin is trading well below its 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day exponential moving averages. All three are sloping downward, which is technical speak for "momentum is bad." The 200-day EMA sits up at $106,822, miles above current price. Every bounce this month has stalled right at the declining 20-day EMA, showing that buyers aren't showing up with conviction.
The RSI is hanging around 25, which signals oversold conditions. Normally that would suggest a bounce is coming, but when you pair oversold readings with a trendline break, you often get prolonged resets instead of quick recoveries.
Next Stop: $75,000?
If Bitcoin keeps sliding, the next major support zone is around $75,000. That level marks the midpoint of last year's consolidation and served as the launchpad for the prior breakout. A weekly close below the multi-year trendline increases the odds of a trip down to the $80,000 to $75,000 range.
On the weekly chart, Bitcoin is sliding toward the lower Bollinger Band as volatility expands. On-balance volume, which tracks cumulative buying and selling pressure, has started turning lower after holding steady earlier in the year. That's a sign that sellers are dominating spot flows and distribution is underway.
Why This Matters
Here's what makes this moment interesting: Bitcoin is showing both a serious technical breakdown and serious long-term institutional conviction at the same time. That combination is rare. The multi-year trendline break mirrors every major reset the cryptocurrency has experienced since 2015. Those resets hurt, but they also preceded the biggest rallies.
What's different now is the type of capital flowing into the market. Exchange-traded funds, Wall Street institutions, and tokenized asset platforms are creating demand structures that didn't exist in prior cycles. When someone like Hoskinson frames the next two quarters as "downside clearing" rather than the start of a bear market, he's essentially arguing that the breakdown is setting up an accumulation phase for bigger players.
If that view is correct, then the $75,000 level becomes less of a scary drop and more of an entry point for the institutions building positions ahead of a 2026 run that they already consider locked in. Whether retail investors have the stomach to wait through the clearing phase is another question entirely.
