Veteran trader Peter Brandt, a decades-long trader of commodities and crypto known for his chart-based calls, had picked Oct. 4 as the day Bitcoin's bear market would end, but he now believes the market may have beaten him to it.

"There's a good possibility we have seen the low and now are entering a new bull market cycle in Bitcoin," Brandt told Cointelegraph on the latest episode of its Trade Secrets show.

In July, Brandt warned in an earlier Trade Secrets interview that prices could fall into the high-$40,000 range. Bitcoin was trading near $64,000 when that interview was published and had climbed to almost $85,000 by his latest appearance.

With the benefit of hindsight, the slide to around $58,000 in late June may have already marked the cycle bottom. Even so, Brandt does not rule out a sharp drop first. He is watching for a possible pullback toward $65,000 or $66,000 in early October.

"One thing that could happen, of course, is we just had too many people now chase the market," he said. "They have bought the idea that the Bitcoin low is in and they have loaded up on the rally."

A pullback could shake out those late buyers and give investors a chance to build their positions, he added. "We all know Bitcoin doesn't go straight up."

Brandt raises cycle peak target to as much as $600,000

Brandt has lifted his sights for Bitcoin's next peak, projecting a late-2029 high of between $300,000 and $600,000, up from the $250,000 to $300,000 range he outlined in July.

"The bull market cycle this time has a very good chance of reaching half a million," he said.

In his view, a million-dollar Bitcoin by 2030 is not impossible, but he does not need that target to come true for the trade to work. Brandt said he has not deployed all the money he has earmarked for Bitcoin and would be content with 70% of that allocation in the market for 70% of the move into the projected 2029 highs.

"If Bitcoin's $350,000 in late 2029, I'm not gonna be a million-dollar bull," he said.

Price move 'explanations' are often wrong

Brandt is also wary of using headlines about the CLARITY Act, a US bill that would clarify how digital assets are regulated, or other events to explain every price move, preferring to study the timing and pace of previous market cycles to gauge what could come next.

"Markets do something, traders need to create a narrative. More often than, the narrative is at least partially wrong," he said. "Let price be king."

His model places the halving — the supply-schedule event coded into Bitcoin that cuts the new coins issued to miners in half roughly every four years — roughly halfway in time between the bear market low and the next peak, and he expects gains to accelerate toward the end of the cycle. The final three or four months could deliver about 30% of the total increase, he said.

The forecast assumes that a new bull market is already underway and that Bitcoin's historical cycle patterns broadly hold. For now, Brandt cares more about identifying the next buying opportunity with manageable risk than about whether Bitcoin reaches $100,000 by year-end.

"It's unimportant," he said. "I think more important is can we identify the next tradable spot where one can have somewhat of a measured risk?"

Brandt questions XRP's investment appeal

Brandt is famously dismissive of many altcoins and argues that the thesis of investors pouring money into "some fool coin" like XRP, the token associated with Ripple's payments business, is often wrong.

In his eyes, XRP's usefulness for payments and Ripple's banking partnerships do not automatically make it a winning investment.

"Just because something is transactional, that doesn't mean automatically that it must be more valuable," he said, comparing the token to the US dollar, which works for payments but is not bought on the expectation that its transactional usefulness will push up its value.

Ether and Solana receive a warmer reception, with room for both alongside Bitcoin in his suggested crypto portfolio allocations. Chasing the next new token is another matter.

"Don't be sold on the new upstarts, don't be conned into the latest fast horse in game," he said.

For financially secure investors, Brandt suggests a crypto allocation of up to 10%, with Bitcoin taking the largest share.

"I believe that trading is a marathon, not a sprint."