To The Moon

Bitcoin (, BUY) $Bitcoin(BTC.USD.CC)$ $Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust(BTC)$ $BTC Digital(BTCT)$ $Grayscale Bitcoin Trust(GBTC)$ - Bitcoin’s Bull Market Has Begun; Establishing a $250,000 Cycle Target by 2029

Tiger Research believe Bitcoin has entered a new bull-market regime and maintain BUY and establish a $250,000 cycle target to be reached by 2029 or earlier, implying approximately 190% upside from the latest price near $86,100.

“Higher lows, higher highs and recovery above key investor cost bases support moving beyond our July late-bear-market assessment. Renewed ETF buying adds evidence that demand is recovering alongside price.

Expected policy headwinds failed to break the uptrend. The CLARITY Act setback and the Fed’s 25bp hike were largely anticipated. BTC’s policy-week drawdown was 5.9%, while its lowest price in the 24 hours following the FOMC decision was just 1.0% below the pre-decision reference. The subsequent recovery cleared the May high of $82,814, taking gains from the July trough to 49.1%. This progression—from a contained pullback to recovery and a fresh breakout—strengthens our conviction in the cycle turn.

The September cost-basis recovery is now accompanied by renewed ETF demand. BTC briefly slipped below the True Market Mean near $76,000–77,000 but remained above the short-term-holder cost basis before recovering above both benchmarks. ETFs attracted $4.20bn of net inflows from August 17 through September 21, reversing the direction of the $8.42bn withdrawn during eight consecutive outflow weeks in May–early July. September 21’s $937.3mn inflow was the largest since the October 2025 cycle peak. These flows provide a demand-side cross-check to the improving price structure.

A limited hiking cycle leaves our longer-term fiscal thesis intact. Persistent primary deficits and higher refinancing costs strengthen incentives to contain government financing costs over time. Financial repression remains a plausible source of support for Bitcoin’s monetary premium, even while tighter liquidity presents near-term headwinds. The more material cyclical risk is a sustained upward repricing of the tightening endpoint or the duration of restrictive policy.

Our $250,000 target combines a gold-relative valuation anchor with an on-chain cost-basis cross-check. On a 21mn terminal-supply basis, the target implies a $5.25tn network value, equivalent to 16.9% of gold’s estimated market value at our September 22 reference price and near the lower end of our initiation’s 15%–25% range. Under our financial-repression scenario, gold could appreciate alongside Bitcoin, expanding the dollar value of the store-of-value benchmark itself. Illustratively, a 20%–30% increase in gold would reduce the target’s implied BTC-to-gold value ratio to 13.0%–14.1%, holding the physical gold stock unchanged. Further gold appreciation would therefore provide additional support for the target without requiring as large an increase in Bitcoin’s relative allocation.

The required TMM growth is below all three historical recovery windows in our analysis. A 50%–70% premium to True Market Mean requires that cost basis to reach approximately $147,000–167,000, implying 24%–29% annualized growth over three years from the current $76,890. This compares with approximately 39% over the three years following the April 2023 recovery signal, with even faster growth in the recoveries beginning in December 2015 and May 2019.”

Expected Headwinds Failed to Break the Uptrend

Bitcoin’s response to last week’s policy events strengthens our view that a new bull market is underway. The market absorbed two largely anticipated headwinds, experienced a limited pullback and subsequently resumed its advance. We place greater weight on the recovery and the breakout that followed than on the immediate reaction to either announcement.

On September 15, the Senate failed to advance the CLARITY Act in a procedural vote. Ahead of the result, Polymarket’s contract on the bill becoming law in 2026 had traded at roughly 10%–20%, suggesting that expectations for enactment were already low.

The Federal Reserve’s September 16 decision to raise rates by 25bp was similarly well anticipated. CME’s September 15 market commentary put the FedWatch-implied probability of a hike at 92%, leaving limited surprise in the rate increase itself.

The pullback was contained, and the Fed decision was followed by little additional downside. BTC declined 5.9% from its September 14 intraday high of $79,583 to $74,924 on September 15. This was the broader policy-week drawdown, rather than an estimate of the isolated impact of either announcement.

Ahead of the FOMC release, BTC was trading at approximately $75,683. Its lowest price over the following 24 hours was $74,959—just 1.0% below the pre-decision reference and near the preceding day’s trough. The rate increase was followed by volatility, but no sustained break below that low-price region.

The subsequent recovery carried BTC beyond both its pre-event levels and the spring rally high. By early September 18, BTC had recovered the September 14 daily close of approximately $78,184. On September 21, it surpassed the May 6 intraday high of $82,814. At the latest data snapshot, BTC was trading near $86,093, up 14.9% from the September 15 trough and 4.0% above the May peak.

We interpret this as evidence that buyers are increasingly willing to absorb available supply. Together with the improving price structure and reclaimed on-chain cost bases discussed below, the behavior supports our view that September’s weakness was a correction within a developing bull market.

Higher Highs and Reclaimed Cost Bases Support a Bull Regime

Bitcoin’s improving price structure and recovery above key on-chain cost bases support our view that the bear market has ended. In our July 2 report, we argued that the market had likely entered the final quartile of its bear-market reset, while stopping short of calling a new bull cycle. The distinction then was between an attractive entry point and a confirmed recovery. The evidence accumulated since that report now supports upgrading our assessment of the cycle.

The daily chart has developed a sequence of higher lows and higher highs. Following the July 1 trough near $57,700, BTC established a higher low around $62,200 in early August and another near $74,900 in mid-September. Rally highs advanced from approximately $66,900 in July to $82,300 in early September, followed by an intraday high near $87,400 in the latest advance. This gives us two higher lows and two higher highs on the broader swing structure, with the current upward leg still unfolding. Buyers have returned at progressively higher levels, while successive advances have cleared prior peaks.

The contrast with the spring rally is important. The advance into May ultimately gave way to a fresh low in July. This time, the September correction held well above the preceding summer lows, and the subsequent recovery surpassed the May peak. At approximately $86,100 in our latest data snapshot, BTC was up 49.1% from the July trough. We place greater weight on the rising sequence of pullback lows and rally highs than on the magnitude of that gain alone.

The recovery above on-chain cost bases strengthens the bullish case, with September providing an important test of its durability. The STH cost basis estimates the average acquisition price of coins acquired within the preceding 155 days. The True Market Mean provides a broader reference for active-investor cost, discounting the influence of long-dormant and lost coins. These models help identify economically meaningful regions where changes in holder profitability may influence buying and selling decisions.

The spring rally shows why a crossover alone is insufficient. BTC also traded above both cost bases during the April–May recovery. That improvement proved temporary: price subsequently lost both benchmarks and declined to a fresh low around the turn of June and July. During the summer consolidation, BTC spent an extended period below both lines before reclaiming them in the late-August advance. The relevant question was whether the market could sustain that recovery through another period of selling.

September’s correction has so far produced a different outcome. BTC briefly slipped below the True Market Mean, then around $76,000–77,000, but remained above the STH cost basis. The pullback therefore tested the broader active investor cost region without returning the recent-holder cohort to an aggregate unrealized loss against its modeled cost basis. Price subsequently recovered above the True Market Mean and broke through the spring high. At the latest chart observation, BTC was near $86,000, compared with approximately $77,000 for the True Market Mean and $72,000 for the STH cost basis.

ETF demand has turned from a sustained headwind into renewed net buying. Eight consecutive outflow weeks removed $8.42bn from the ETF channel between May 11 and July 5. By contrast, the period from August 17 through September 21 attracted $4.20bn of net inflows, culminating in a $937.3mn single-day inflow—the largest since the October 7, 2025 cycle peak. Renewed ETF buying adds a demand-side confirmation to the price breakout and recovery above investor cost bases.

A bull market will still need to absorb selling as holders become more profitable. Our focus therefore shifts from whether sellers have been exhausted near the lows to whether subsequent corrections preserve the improving structure. The combination of higher lows, higher highs and recovery above key investor cost bases gives us sufficient confidence to move from a late-bear-market assessment to a bull-market regime view.

The Fiscal Thesis Survives a Limited Hiking Cycle

Bitcoin’s post-FOMC recovery suggests that investors can look through anticipated tightening when its likely scale appears manageable. The Fed raised its target range by 25bp to 3.75%–4.00% on September 16, while the updated dot plot pointed to further tightening: the median policy-rate projection stood at 4.1% for both end-2026 and end-2027, consistent with another quarter-point increase followed by a plateau. The subsequent BTC breakout therefore came with additional tightening still in view, rather than requiring an imminent policy pivot. We see this as an important distinction between the current recovery and a market overwhelmed by an escalating tightening cycle.

The more damaging risk is a tightening endpoint that keeps moving higher. In 2022, investors faced substantial revisions to the expected policy path. The Fed’s median projection for the end-2023 federal funds rate rose from 2.8% in March to 4.6% in September. Each upward revision increased the amount of restraint that markets needed to absorb and pushed relief further away. We interpret BTC’s latest response as evidence that a limited, largely anticipated adjustment can coexist with improving demand and a rising price trend. The key risk remains a renewed upward repricing of the peak rate or the duration of restrictive policy—not simply the next expected 25bp increase.

Higher rates can also strengthen the longer-term fiscal argument for Bitcoin, even as they tighten financial conditions today. Our September 9 report, Higher Rates Would Leave America’s Fiscal Constraint Intact, highlighted the tension between persistent primary deficits and rising refinancing costs. As higher market yields feed into the government’s effective borrowing rate, interest expense adds to borrowing needs unless offset by fiscal adjustment or stronger nominal growth. Disinflation can initially compound that pressure by slowing nominal GDP growth before lower borrowing costs work through the debt stock. Under those conditions, additional tightening makes the fiscal constraint more binding and increases the value of potential policies that contain financing costs.

The rally may therefore partly reflect investors assigning a higher probability to financial repression further ahead. In our framework, a larger debt-service burden alongside persistent primary deficits strengthens the incentive for policies that restrain real government financing costs. Such a regime would increase the appeal of scarce, non sovereign monetary assets, and investors need not wait for those policies to be implemented before assigning greater value to that protection. We view this as a plausible component of the post-FOMC advance, alongside the renewed ETF demand documented above. Near-term tightening and a stronger long-term Bitcoin thesis can coexist: the market may already be looking beyond the immediate liquidity headwind toward the fiscal consequences that follow.

Establishing a $250,000 Cycle Target by 2029

We establish a $250,000 Bitcoin cycle target, which we expect to be reached by 2029 or earlier. The target is anchored in Bitcoin’s prospective share of gold’s market value and supported by an on-chain framework combining a roughly doubled active-investor cost basis with a 50%–70% cyclical premium. The required cost-basis growth is below the latest recovery’s historical outcome, while the assumed premium remains below the previous cycle’s maximum. Our target therefore depends on continued adoption and capital formation, rather than a return to earlier cycles’ speculative extremes.

At $250,000, Bitcoin would represent approximately 16.9% of gold’s current estimated market value. Using the World Gold Council’s latest above-ground stock estimate of 222,600 tonnes and spot gold near $4,336/oz on September 22, we estimate the value of above-ground gold at approximately $31.0tn. Our BTC target implies a fully diluted network value of $5.25tn on the 21mn terminal-supply convention. This remains near the lower end of the 15%–25% relative allocation range established in our initiation report.

Financial repression would likely lift the gold benchmark itself. Under the scenario outlined in our fiscal framework, policies that contain nominal yields while inflation persists would reduce the appeal of nominal savings and strengthen demand for non-sovereign stores of value. We would expect gold to benefit alongside Bitcoin as investors seek protection against purchasing-power erosion. Our valuation framework therefore allows for both a larger Bitcoin allocation relative to gold and an increase in the dollar value of gold itself.

A rising gold price would reduce the relative allocation needed to support our $250,000 target. Illustratively, a 20% increase in gold from the current reference price would raise its estimated market value to approximately $37.2tn, reducing Bitcoin’s implied ratio to 14.1%. A 30% increase would lift the benchmark to approximately $40.3tn and lower the ratio to 13.0%, holding the physical gold stock unchanged. These are sensitivities rather than separate gold price forecasts. They show why comparing our target solely with today’s gold market can overstate the relative allocation required at the point of realization. Bitcoin can reach $250,000 through a growing allocation within an expanding store-of-value market, with further gold appreciation providing additional support for the target.

True Market Mean (TMM) provides the cost-basis cross-check. We prefer TMM for this purpose because its activity based adjustment discounts the influence of long-dormant and potentially lost coins, making it more relevant to the profitability of economically active investors than an unadjusted, all-supply cost measure. Since TMM itself responds to future market activity, we use it to test the conditions implied by our target rather than present it as an independent forecast of price.

A 50%–70% premium requires TMM to reach approximately $147,000–167,000 for BTC to trade at $250,000. Relative to the September 22 TMM reading of $76,890, this implies 1.91–2.17x cost-basis growth, or approximately 24%–29% annually over three years.

This growth requirement is below the last recovery cycle. We define recovery as the first above-one AVIV month end following at least six consecutive below-one month-ends, without selecting the eventual price low or requiring the subsequent breakout to remain successful. Following the April 2023 signal, TMM rose from approximately $29,018 to $77,927 over three years, reaching 2.69x its starting level—a compound annual growth rate of approximately 39%. Earlier recoveries beginning in December 2015 and May 2019 produced three-year multiples of 15.45x and 5.26x, respectively. We place greater weight on the more recent 2.69x outcome when assessing a larger, more mature Bitcoin market.

Our 1.5x–1.7x AVIV assumption allows for further moderation in peak profitability as Bitcoin matures. The measure reached approximately 3.02 in 2017, 2.67 in 2021 and 1.89 during the 2024–2025 cycle, with the latter maximum occurring in March 2024. We assume a lower premium when our target is reached, rather than extrapolate those earlier extremes. The comparison is with each cycle’s maximum AVIV, which need not coincide with its final price high. The central arithmetic is straightforward: doubling the current TMM to approximately $153,800 and applying a 60% premium produces a price near $246,000. Across the full 50%–70% premium range, the same doubled cost basis supports approximately $231,000–261,000. Our $250,000 target sits within that region; at a 60% premium, it requires TMM to rise slightly more than twofold, to $156,250.