The Big Whale Market Call - December 2025

Speakers

• André Dragosch - Head of Research, Bitwise Europe
• ‍Christopher Jensen - Director of Research at Franklin Templeton
• ‍‍Aleksandar Bukovski - Analyst, The Big Whale
• Raphaël Bloch - Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, The Big Whale

Bitcoin's four-year cycle: from halving myth to macro reality

• Christopher Jensen: "The traditional four-year cycle, as we've come to know it, is dead."
• With annual BTC inflation below 1%, the halving effect is now marginal compared with flows from ETFs and corporates.
• André Dragosch shows that 2025 institutional demand (~1 million BTC) dwarfs the halving supply impact (~164,000 BTC/year) by around 7x.
• Cycles are increasingly driven by business cycles, ISM/PMI troughs and global liquidity - not block-subsidy math.

2025: ugly year, mispriced asset

• Unemployment rising towards 4.3-4.4%, PMI below 50 and weak manufacturing point to a fragile macro backdrop.
  
• BTC just logged one of its worst Novembers ever, with ETF outflows and no euphoric blow-off top this cycle.
  
• Dragosch's valuation frameworks (MVRV, gold and money-supply models) cluster around a "fair value" near $270,000 per BTC, far above spot.
  
• "Price is what you pay, value is what you get" - the disconnect between the two is as wide as it's been since the 2022 bear-market lows.

2026: choppy road, higher destination

• Jensen expects 2026 to finish up for BTC, but warns of a "choppy and depressing" stretch first as QT's end and liquidity shifts filter through.
  
• Both institutional and retail flows are expected to return: institutions move slowly but steadily; retail sentiment can flip quickly once price turns.
  
• Jensen: "The path is less clear, but the destination is: Bitcoin seems undervalued at current prices."

Bitcoin: from equity hedge wannabe to bond hedge meta

• Dragosch: "correlation with equities is currently high (~0.6), so equity drawdowns still drag Bitcoin lower in the short run."
  
• On bond down-days (yields up, bond prices down), Bitcoin tends to outperform gold and is less correlated to sovereign bonds.
• Volatility is structurally compressing: from ~200% realised vol in 2012 to ~30-40% today, closer to "Nasdaq + leverage" than a pure casino chip.
• This could set up a new portfolio meta for allocators: "bonds + Bitcoin" as a modern defensive barbell.

MicroStrategy & BTC treasuries: liquidity FUD vs balance-sheet reality

• Dragosch: "Strategy/MicroStrategy's BTC assets are ~3.7x larger than total liabilities (convertible bonds + preferreds). There is no imminent bankruptcy risk."
  
• A hypothetical full liquidation of their stack would "only" knock BTC by an estimated ~22% - painful, but not existential for the asset.
  
• The real historical risk was liquidity (dividends and coupons) given a "never sell BTC" doctrine - now mitigated by a $1.4 billion cash reserve covering ~20+ months of preferred dividends.
  
• For many BTC-treasury equities, the real story is mispriced optionality and wild mNAV swings - not an inevitable doom loop.

Altcoins: no more rising tide meta

• Jensen expects future alt cycles to be far more selective: projects with real revenues, sound tokenomics and clear value accrual will dominate.
  
• BTC still sets the regime: it's hard for even strong alts to break new highs without Bitcoin first reclaiming the narrative.
  
• Raphael Bloch flags ETH and SOL as structural winners tied to tokenization and real-world asset rails.
  
• Over multi-year horizons, most altcoins are still likely to underperform BTC on a relative basis - the graveyard effect persists.