21Shares Concedes Its 2026 Crystal Ball Needed a Polishing 🪞

Crypto investment firm and ETF issuer 21Shares has walked back its 2026 prediction that Bitcoin would break from its four-year halving cycle, conceding in its latest "State of the Market" report that the familiar pattern is still intact. "Heading into 2026, we believed that Bitcoin's four-year cycle could be finished," the firm wrote. "Six months in, we have to be honest: price action still looks familiar." Bitcoin fell below $60,000 on Wednesday for the second time this month, recently changing hands at $59,781. The asset is now down 52% from its all-time high of $126,080 but remains above its on-chain cost basis of $54,000, according to data from Glassnode, a level the firm said signals the market has not yielded to "outright capitulation."

21Shares maintained that the cycle has bent even if it has not broken, pointing to the roughly 50% drawdown as far milder than the 80%+ declines of prior bear markets. "Market structure has clearly changed: ETF ownership is increasingly institutional and the current drawdown of roughly 50% remains far milder than the 80%+ bear markets of prior cycles," the firm wrote.

The firm also revised other forecasts that have fallen short, including a jump to a $1 trillion stablecoin market cap, $300 billion in DeFi total value locked, and $250 billion in assets under management for crypto treasury firms, all of which have faced lingering regulatory uncertainty, consistent DeFi exploits, and declining crypto prices. Crypto ETFs, which 21Shares expected to reach $400 billion in assets under management, are down nearly $5 billion since the start of the year, with data from CoinGlass indicating that nearly $3 billion in assets left crypto ETFs over the last quarter.

Shares in Bitcoin treasury firm Strategy (MSTR) fell to their lowest price in more than two years on Wednesday, dropping as low as $97.30 about 30 minutes after the opening bell and recently trading at $98.05 per Yahoo Finance, a decline of roughly 5.5% on the day, as concerns over the $52 billion Bitcoin accumulator continue to weigh on the stock. One 21Shares prediction remains on track: trading volumes on prediction markets, which the firm anticipated would surpass $100 billion this year, led by Polymarket.