Bitcoin could bottom in October before recovering to around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving, according to Swan Bitcoin CEO Cory Klippsten.

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price peaked above $126,000 in early October 2025, meaning the “market should bottom in October,” Klippsten told Cointelegraph in an interview (video, post on X).

He argued that Bitcoin has so far bottomed about 12 months after each previous bull market peak, while cautioning against extrapolating from only a few previous cycles.

Klippsten’s call for an October bottom builds on a June interview with Cointelegraph, in which he said Bitcoin may bottom earlier than in previous cycles as long-term holders accumulated a record share of the supply — 14.7 million BTC. Long-term holder supply, a widely tracked on-chain metric, typically counts coins that have not moved for at least 155 days, making it a gauge of conviction among existing Bitcoin owners.

In the latest interview, Klippsten said Bitcoin could fall to $57,000, or even $53,000, before a quick recovery, and could then reach around $130,000 ahead of the 2028 halving. Bitcoin’s halving, a scheduled cut to the new BTC issued per block that occurs roughly every four years, last took place in 2024, with the next event expected in 2028. The 2024 halving cut the block subsidy to 3.125 BTC, and the 2028 event would halve that again to roughly 1.5625 BTC.

Other analytics providers are eyeing an earlier bottom. Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, said Bitcoin could confirm a bear-market bottom in August with a monthly close above $63,000, a level that would turn several of the analytics firm’s cycle indicators bullish.

Altcoins are “basically dead” as money, crypto will become TradFi

A longtime Bitcoin-only advocate whose firm, Swan Bitcoin, sells BTC savings and investment products, Klippsten was also an early public critic of Celsius and Terra ahead of their 2022 collapses. He said altcoins are “basically dead” as competitors to Bitcoin as money, arguing that the best outcome for crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) is to “become part of TradFi.”

His absorption thesis lands amid accelerating convergence between crypto and traditional finance: US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds approved in January 2024 opened the asset class to Wall Street brokerage platforms and financial advisers, while federal stablecoin legislation signed into law in July 2025 set rules under which banks can issue their own dollar-pegged tokens.

When asked about altcoins that may outperform the broader market, Klippsten pointed to Hyperliquid, a decentralized exchange for perpetual futures that runs on its own layer-1 blockchain, arguing that centralized crypto businesses will eventually be brought under traditional finance regulation.

“Hyperliquid is a business and it has a token. If it’s a business that’s centralized, it will eventually just get sucked up by TradFi and be thought of as an exchange and a bank,” he said.

Hyperliquid generated $5.9 million in revenue during the past week, ranking as the industry’s fifth-largest DeFi protocol by weekly revenue, according to DefiLlama.

The Hyperliquid (HYPE) token has risen 130% year-to-date, while Bitcoin’s price fell 28% during the same period, TradingView data shows.

In a July report, crypto market maker Wintermute argued that the growing presence of institutional investors has changed the dynamics of altcoin markets, resulting in altcoin rallies becoming narrower and more selective. Wintermute said liquidity was concentrating in the assets institutions favored, while activity across the market’s “long tail” weakened.