Bitcoin has exited its bear market, according to analysts at crypto research firm CryptoQuant — though they caution that a possible pullback may still lie ahead. The firm says the coin is behaving as it has in past cycles, which have tended to run in roughly four-year stretches around bitcoin's scheduled halvings of new supply. The most recent halving took effect in April 2024.

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju wrote on X Tuesday that the asset had "entered into the early bull phase." He pointed to movements bitcoin made in its last cycle before entering a bull market, and said the coin was currently doing the same thing.

JUST IN: Bitcoin is currently having its 3rd best August EVER, currently up 25% this month pic.twitter.com/q45AHHpK4e — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) August 24, 2026

CryptoQuant research shows that bitcoin flows to derivative exchanges have started again, confirming that traders have entered "risk-on" mode — a pattern that "has marked the start of a new bull cycle" in the past. The firm specializes in on-chain analytics — data on the movement of coins to and from exchanges — which underpins its cycle calls.

Another analyst at the firm, Theophiluspep, wrote that while the coin was entering a bull market, "spot demand, ETF flows, and market momentum have turned decisively bullish, but elevated profit-taking, exchange inflows, and overbought conditions suggest a potential near-term cooldown."

"This looks increasingly like a genuine regime shift into the early phase of a new bull market, driven more by improving spot demand and institutional ETF buying than by excessive leverage," he added.

Bitcoin started surging last week. It is currently up 22% over a seven-day period and was recently priced at $78,716, having briefly touched $81,160 on Monday. The rise comes after a sluggish June and July, when the coin mostly traded below $65,000.

U.S. investors last week reversed course and bought up shares in the bitcoin exchange-traded funds — spot-based products approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January 2024 that let investors track the coin through conventional brokerage accounts. The funds had their best week since October — the same time bitcoin notched its record of $126,080. Data from Farside Investors, a tracker of daily fund flows, shows that the funds — managed by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and Morgan Stanley — received $1.9 billion in new cash.

The change in sentiment comes after the Treasury Department's announcement last week that it would at least double the size of its long-dated bond buybacks — part of a regular buyback program the department relaunched in 2024, its first in over two decades, to improve trading liquidity in older securities. Since the announcement, yields have gone down, while bitcoin and gold have shot up. The dollar last week was trading at a three-month low and on track for its worst week of August; bitcoin, on the other hand, had its best week since 2023.

Positive regulatory news coming out of the White House also helped: President Donald Trump held a meeting with crypto executives earlier last week, and urged lawmakers to get the Clarity Act over the line. The bill, passed by the House in July 2025, would split oversight of digital assets between the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission, clarifying which regulator has authority over which tokens — a distinction crypto firms have long sought.

This post first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.