Original author: Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer, Bitwise

Original translation by: Saoirse, Foresight News

Bitcoin's sideways movement actually signals that its "IPO moment" has arrived. Why does this imply a higher proportion of asset allocation? The answer is as follows.

In his latest article , Jordi Visser explores a key issue: despite a constant stream of positive news—strong ETF inflows, significant regulatory progress, and continued growth in institutional demand—Bitcoin trading remains frustratingly stuck in a sideways trend.

Visser believes that Bitcoin is undergoing a "silent IPO," transforming from a "fantasy concept" into a "mainstream success story." He points out that typically, when stocks experience such a transformation, they tend to consolidate sideways for 6 to 18 months before initiating an upward trend.

Take Facebook (now Meta) as an example. On May 12, 2012, Facebook went public at $38 per share. For more than a year afterward, its stock price hovered between sideways movement and decline, failing to break through the IPO price of $38 for a full 15 months. Google and other high-profile tech startups also exhibited similar trends in their early stages after going public.

Visser stated that sideways trading doesn't necessarily indicate a problem with the underlying asset. This situation often arises because founders and early employees choose to "cash out." Investors who boldly bet on startups when they were extremely risky have now reaped hundreds of times their returns and naturally want to secure their profits. The process of insider selling and institutional investors taking over takes time—only when this transfer of equity (or assets) reaches a certain equilibrium will the asset price resume its upward trend.

Visser points out that Bitcoin's current situation is remarkably similar to the one described above. Early adopters who bought Bitcoin when it was priced at $1, $10, $100, or even $1,000 now possess wealth sufficient to span generations. Bitcoin has now "entered the mainstream"—ETFs are listed on the New York Stock Exchange, large corporations include it in their reserve assets, and sovereign wealth funds are entering the market—and these early investors finally have the opportunity to realize their gains.

This is cause for celebration! Their patience has finally paid off. Five years ago, if someone were to dump $1 billion worth of Bitcoin, it would likely throw the entire market into chaos; but today, the market has a sufficiently diverse buyer base and ample trading volume to more smoothly absorb such large-scale transactions.

It's important to note that on-chain data interpretations of "who is selling" are not uniform; therefore, Visser's analysis is only one factor currently influencing market trends. However, this factor is crucial, and considering its implications for the future market is undoubtedly of significant value.

Here are the two core conclusions I extracted from this article.

Conclusion 1: The long-term outlook is extremely optimistic.

Many cryptocurrency investors were frustrated after reading Visser's article: "Early adopters are selling Bitcoin to institutions! Do they know something we don't?"

This interpretation is completely wrong.

Early investors selling off their holdings does not signify the "end of an asset's life cycle"; it merely indicates that the asset has entered a new phase.

Take Facebook as another example. Admittedly, its stock price traded sideways below $38 for a year after its IPO, but now it's at $637, a 1576% increase from the offering price. If I could go back to 2012, I would buy all of Facebook stock at $38 per share.

Of course, investing during Facebook's Series A funding round could have yielded higher returns—but the risks involved were also far greater then than after the IPO.

The same applies to Bitcoin today. While the likelihood of Bitcoin achieving a 100x return in a single year may decrease in the future, it still has significant upside potential once the "asset allocation phase" ends. As Bitwise pointed out in its " Bitcoin Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions " report, we believe Bitcoin will reach $1.3 million per coin by 2035, although I personally think this prediction is still conservative.

Furthermore, I'd like to add a point: there's a key difference between the market after early Bitcoin dumping and the market after a company's IPO. After an IPO, a company still needs continuous growth to support its stock price—Facebook couldn't simply jump from $38 to $637 because it didn't have enough revenue and profit to support such a surge. It had to achieve growth gradually by increasing revenue, expanding into new businesses, and focusing on mobile platforms, a process that still carries risks.

But this is not the case with Bitcoin. Once the early big players have finished selling, Bitcoin doesn't need to "do anything" anymore—the only condition required for it to grow from its current market capitalization of $2.5 trillion to the $25 trillion market capitalization of gold is "to gain widespread acceptance".

I'm not saying this process will happen overnight, but it could very well be faster than the rise in Facebook's stock price.

From a long-term perspective, Bitcoin's sideways consolidation is actually a "golden opportunity." In my view, this is a good chance to accumulate more Bitcoin before it resumes its upward trend.

Conclusion 2: The era of allocating 1% of your portfolio to Bitcoin has come to an end.

As Visser argues in his article, companies that have completed an IPO are far less risky than startups. They have broader equity distributions, face more stringent regulatory scrutiny, and have greater opportunities for business diversification. Investing in Facebook after its IPO is far less risky than investing in a startup founded by college dropouts and operating from a party room in Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley.

The same applies to Bitcoin today. As Bitcoin holders have shifted from "early adopters" to "institutional investors," and its technology has matured, Bitcoin no longer faces the "existential risk" it did a decade ago; it has become a mature asset class. This is clearly reflected in Bitcoin's volatility—since the Bitcoin ETF began trading in January 2024, its volatility has decreased significantly.

Bitcoin historical volatility

Data source: Bitwise Asset Management. Data period: January 1, 2013 to September 30, 2025.

This change offers investors an important insight: while Bitcoin's returns may decline slightly in the future, its volatility will decrease significantly. As an asset allocator, my choice in the face of this change would not be to "sell"—after all, we predict that Bitcoin will be one of the best-performing asset classes globally over the next decade—but rather, I would choose to "buy more."

In other words, lower volatility means "lower risk of holding more of the asset".

Visser's article also confirms a phenomenon we've observed before: Over the past few months, Bitwise has held hundreds of meetings with financial advisors, institutions, and other professional investors, and has found a clear trend—the era of 1% Bitcoin allocation is over. More and more investors are beginning to believe that a 5% allocation should be the "starting point."

Bitcoin is experiencing its "IPO moment." If history is any guide, we should embrace this new era by "accumulating" our holdings.