Ki Young Ju Says Bitcoin (BTC) Bear Cycle Is Over, Sees 12-24 Months of Rise or Sideways Trade

Update 02:45 UTC: The call now comes with data behind it: in a special report published 2026-10-13, CryptoQuant declared a new bull cycle underway, backed by its Bull Score Index, a composite of ten on-chain and market metrics that climbed from 20 in late July to 90 on September 26, its highest since December…

Ki Young Ju Calls the Bear Cycle Over

If the cycle read is right, the next one to two years hold either renewed gains or a long consolidation band, and no return to a sustained downtrend. That is the position Ki Young Ju, chief executive of the on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, set out on Tuesday, 2026-10-13, in a post on X. His words were direct: “The Bitcoin (BTC) bear cycle is over; expect a rise or sideways price action for 12 to 24 months.” In practical terms, the window he described stretches to October 2028 at its outer edge, spanning the period after the most recent Bitcoin halving. Ju runs one of the most closely watched on-chain data desks in crypto, the firm whose exchange-flow and holder-cohort dashboards feed a large share of the cycle models traders argue with, so the statement moved the debate over where the Bitcoin (BTC) price goes from here. In the four-year framework that frames most cycle analysis, a bear phase has historically followed the post-halving peak, which makes a declaration that the phase is finished a claim about the calendar as much as the chart. The market he is assessing has spent recent sessions compressed between $81,000 and $84,000, a band that has held while participants weigh whether the current drawdown is a correction inside a larger advance or the opening leg of a fresh decline. Ju's answer rejects the second reading outright. He did not frame the call as the start of a vertical move: the stated expectation is explicitly two-sided, a rise or a flat market, and he published no price target with it. What the post removes, in his telling, is the scenario that has hung over the tape for weeks, the idea that the market has entered a new bear phase set to grind the price lower across the year ahead.

The caveats in the same post matter as much as the headline claim. Ju attached no specific level to the outlook and stated that the assessment is not a guarantee the price rises; it is a directional judgment meant to play out over one to two years, not a single quarter. He also flagged the variables that could still bend the path: geopolitical developments, lingering uncertainty and macroeconomic data, any of which, he wrote, can produce swings in prices. That hedge is not decoration: he named no entry level, no invalidation point and no upside marker, which leaves readers with a direction and a duration and nothing else to trade against. Read against the tape, the call lands on a market that has been arguing with itself. Our earlier coverage followed the coin as it reclaimed $83,000 after the IMF lifted its global inflation forecast, and price action has since settled back into the $81,000–$84,000 band. Enthusiasm of the kind Ju describes would, in practice, need steady demand behind it: corporate treasury buyers of the sort holding 8,430 Bitcoin (BTC) on their balance sheets, as Tesla's $960 million Bitcoin position shows, reserve structures modeled on a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, crypto whale wallets adding on weakness, and long-term holders who simply HODL through drawdowns. None of those flows turned negative in his post; none were quantified in it either. The band itself has become the reference point for both camps: bulls read the repeated defenses as accumulation, bears read the rejections as distribution, and the post hands most of its ammunition to the first group.

Ju is not alone in calling the bear phase finished, but another technical read points the price lower before any advance. Arnout Ter Schure of Intelligent Investing, working from Elliott Wave counts, told FXStreet on 2026-10-13 that the five-wave advance from the July 1 low completed at the $87,336 September peak — a level the market has since fallen well below, with the price now trading under $84,000 — and that a larger wave-two correction is now underway. His target zone for that correction is $65,000–$73,000, with a preferred landing near the upper end at $73,000. He also declared Bitcoin's traditional four-year cycle formally over, arguing the pattern that once tracked the halving no longer governs direction. Once the correction ends, he expects a third wave to carry the coin past its all-time high, though he set no date and no target for that leg.

The call now comes with data behind it: in a special report published 2026-10-13, CryptoQuant declared a new bull cycle underway, backed by its Bull Score Index, a composite of ten on-chain and market metrics that climbed from 20 in late July to 90 on September 26, its highest since December 2024 and a level still above the historical 60 threshold for sustained advances. Whale holdings outside exchanges and mining pools reached 3.03 million Bitcoin (BTC), a peak last seen on 2025-11-21, while their 30-day accumulation pace hit its fastest since February 2026. By 15:50 UTC later that day, the firm's latest readings put the 365-day moving average near $80,000, replacing the $81,000 figure cited earlier, and the 200-day near $71,000, an update to the $65,000 level reported before; these were flagged as support in the event of short-term correction risk.

The $81,000–$84,000 Test

However the call ages, the near-term test is already on the chart. While the price holds the $81,000–$84,000 band, neither the bull case nor the bear case has hard confirmation, and our Bitcoin technical analysis keeps those same levels in view. A sustained break below the band would falsify the bear-cycle-over claim well before 12 months pass; a decisive push above $84,000 would do the opposite. Between those thresholds, Ju's forecast and the market's own tape say the same thing in different registers: direction is undecided.