Bitcoin bulls' view: why optimists see upside potential despite stagnation

While bitcoin remains “frozen” at around $84,140, lagging behind the rally in precious metals, supporters of the digital currency continue to defend the long-term potential of the asset. While bitcoin bulls acknowledge the current challenges, they offer alternative explanations for temporary weakness, pointing to structural factors and revaluation of traditional assets.

While gold rose by more than 80% during a period of high inflation and geopolitical tensions, bitcoin showed negative dynamics, falling by 16.93% in annual terms. This discrepancy has raised questions about the fairness of the “digital gold” narrative. However, bitcoin bulls have ready answers to this criticism.

The problem of supply, not demand: what optimists say

Mark Connors, Chief Investment Officer at Risk Dimensions, offers a fundamentally different view of the situation. In his opinion, bitcoin does not suffer a collapse in demand - it is an event of supply distribution.

“Institutional injections into ETFs are huge, but they do not raise the price; they simply absorb the sentence dumped by early adopters over the course of a decade. We are seeing a transfer of ownership, not a loss of interest,” Connors explains. This interpretation is critical to understanding the bulls: they see the current dynamics not as evidence of a collapse in demand, but as a normal process of reconcentration of assets from early investors to institutional players.

Such an analysis suggests that the price increase may resume as soon as the supply distribution stage is completed and most of the tokens pass into the hands of “strong hands”.

The Muscle Memory Effect: Why Gold Is Temporarily Ahead

Bitcoin bulls put forward a psychological explanation for the advantage of gold. Jesse Gilger, senior advisor at Gannett Wealth Advisors, characterizes the current rally in gold as a temporary political aberration.

“In times of fear, institutions tend to revert to what is familiar to them, as they often lack the foresight to embrace a genuine phase shift in technology,” Gilger notes. A similar argument is made by Bitwise’s André Dragosch, who calls this phenomenon “muscle memory”: “in times of uncertainty, investors first turn to the assets with which they are most familiar.”

The bulls see this as a positive signal: when the uncertainty subsides and traditional assets are overvalued, capital will begin to flow into more attractively priced assets, including bitcoin. This means that the current lag could be a harbinger of future supremacy.

Long-Term Technological Stability vs. Historical Legacy

Gilger emphasizes a technical aspect that critics miss. Despite gold’s historical legacy, “bitcoin has been technically stable at the protocol level for more than fifteen years.” This is a long-term bullish argument: the technology has proven to be reliable, and there is a historic deviation in the GLD/BTC ratio that should return to normal.

“A regression to the mean is expected, in which bitcoin will eventually catch up with the market, as it becomes apparent that digital scarcity is more efficient than physical legacy,” Gilger explains. For bulls, this is not just speculation, but a mathematically based expectation.

Charlie Morris, chief investment officer at ByteTree, offers another prospect: Bitcoin is not failing, but simply retreating according to the dynamics of internet stocks, with which it has always been correlated. “It’s curious that gold fans and bitcoin maximalists use the same narratives: limited supply, money printing, inflation, war,” Morris says, stressing that gold is a reserve asset of the real world, and bitcoin is a reserve asset for the digital world.

Deferred Capital Rotation: Waiting for the Moment

Peter Lane, CEO of Jacobi Asset Management, admits that the “digital gold” narrative has not yet been confirmed. However, the bulls continue to wait for the moment when the revaluation will take place. “There is a well-established mass trust in precious metals, which Bitcoin does not yet have. I still believe that over time we will see a delayed rotation in BTC,” Lane argues.

André Dragosch adds a technical rationale: “Based on the relative Mayer coefficient between bitcoin and gold, bitcoin is already at the FTX exploding levels last seen in 2022 for gold.” Moreover, “there is a significant undervaluation of bitcoin relative to the macroeconomic situation in 2026 and the level of global money supply,” which, according to the bulls, will lead to growth in the coming months.

Search for new growth drivers

Anthony Pompliano, Chairman of ProCap Financial, offers a detailed view of the bulls for the future. He acknowledges that bitcoin has served as a hedge against inflation over the past half-century, but notes a change in the macroeconomic environment.

“With the likely onset of deflation, bitcoin will need to find other sources of demand for further growth of the asset,” Pompliano points out. However, he “remains optimistic about future prospects.” For bulls, this means that the asset is ready to move from an inflation hedge to a more versatile reserve asset.

Bitcoin as a permanent solution to inflation

David Parkinson, CEO of Musquet, offers the most ambitious vision for bulls. He believes that the thesis about the “failure of digital gold” is premature noise. “Bitcoin’s fixed supply and network growth continue to provide high yields compared to inflation and are indeed outperforming gold over a multi-year horizon,” Parkinson said.

For the bulls, this is a critical moment: bitcoin is becoming the native monetary asset of the Internet. “This is not a hedge against inflation - this is a permanent solution to this problem. Gold and other traditional inflation-defensive assets are at their point, but eventually bitcoin will outlive and outshine them all,” Parkinson concludes.

Consensus of the Bulls: Patience and Strategy

The combination of the bulls’ arguments paints a general picture: the current stagnation of bitcoin is not a failure of the concept, but a natural phase of redistribution, psychological shift, and revaluation of assets. The bulls are convinced that the history of the GLD/BTC ratio, Mayer’s technical indicators, and macroeconomic logic point to an upcoming capital rotation in favor of digital assets.

While acknowledging that gold has a confidence advantage in the current face of uncertainty shows the realism of the bulls, their long-term bet remains unchanged: bitcoin will recover when its time comes.