According to Bloomberg reports, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan believes Bitcoin may be nearing the bottom of this crypto winter as it has demonstrated remarkable resilience to negative market conditions. Hougan pointed to a string of setbacks the asset shrugged off in recent months, including Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor's selling of Bitcoin reserves through the company, with STRC preferred stock sliding toward $75 from its desired $100 par value. The Clarity Act odds falling from mid-40s to teens and the $116 million Coldcard hardware wallet exploit barely moved Bitcoin's price, unlike past cycles when bear markets overreacted to bad news. Hougan noted that "We're maybe overindexing to good news. I think it's a sign that we may be at the bottom of this crypto winter and that we may have a strong end of the year."
According to reports from CoinDesk, Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan predicts that institutional investors could allocate trillions of dollars to bitcoin over the next decade as it becomes a mainstream financial asset. Hougan estimates that a 1% bitcoin allocation from institutions controlling $100 trillion to $200 trillion in assets could support his long-term price target of $1.3 million per coin by 2035. The shift is already visible in 13F filings for spot bitcoin ETFs and moves by large wealth firms, including Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, to make bitcoin more accessible to clients. Hougan's latest comments to Bloomberg suggest this institutional adoption may be accelerating as the market shows signs of bottoming out.
As reported by Bloomberg, Hougan identified large wealth management platforms as Bitcoin's next marginal buyer, describing it as a slow-moving shift rather than a single event. He noted that several advisory platforms approved Bitwise's own Solana (SOL) staking ETF, BSOL, even during a market down roughly 50% from its highs, which he attributed to advisor demand rather than speculation. Hougan estimated that Bitwise has processed $600 million to $700 million in tax-free in-kind ETF conversions over the past year, demonstrating growing institutional adoption through wealth management channels. This represents a significant shift from the previous corporate buyer dominance, with Hougan expecting future demand to be driven by pension funds, endowments, insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds.
In a memo released on August 12, Hougan argued that crypto valuations outside Bitcoin could rise sharply as more protocols connect revenue generated by network activity to their native tokens. He pointed to projects like Hyperliquid, Uniswap, Aave, Pump.fun and Lighter as examples of protocols using fees or other revenue to finance token purchases or burns. Hougan's strongest forecast was explicitly conditional, stating "we could see valuations double or more" if his view that the link between protocol revenue and token value continues strengthening proves correct. The model has already become significant, with Hyperliquid routing more than $1.16 billion in trading fees into HYPE purchases and creating recurring token demand linked to exchange activity. Uniswap governance has funded about 7.5 million UNI burns worth roughly $25.6 million since December 2025, while Aave's first ten months of buybacks acquired over 205,000 AAVE using $42 million in allocations.
Hougan's $1.3 million BTC price target by 2035 rests on bitcoin taking a 25% share of an expanding store-of-value market. He compares this to gold's market capitalization, which has risen from about $2 trillion when gold ETFs launched in 2004 to roughly $30 trillion today. If the market keeps expanding at its historical 13% annual pace for another decade, bitcoin reaching a quarter of it would put each coin at $1.3 million. Hougan emphasizes that crypto grew up in retail, which took it from $0 to $2 trillion, but if it wants to get from $2 trillion to $20 trillion, it's going to be institutional capital that leads the way. The regulatory environment may accelerate this shift, with the SEC scheduled to consider tailored crypto offering rules on August 14, which could provide clearer boundaries for token revenue sharing mechanisms.
