2022 Crypto Winter: Here are the expectations of crypto industry veterans

According to industry experts, the next Bitcoin bull run may likely occur in 2024 or the early months of 2025, coinciding with Bitcoin’s fourth halving. With the total crypto market capitalization falling below $2 trillion last week, major cryptocurrency experts seem to have been vocal on a looming continuous “crypt winter” or a bear market.

Bitcoin failed to rise beyond the $68,000 mark in 2021 and continued to dip below $40,000 in early 2022, something that inflicted massive losses for big crypto investors like MicroStrategy. But according to Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, a future crypto winter could end up benefiting the sector by offering a boost in upgrading technology.

In a Bloomberg interview on Saturday, Buterin further argued that lower crypto pricing might come in handy in fostering long-term sustainable alternatives while doing away with short-term speculative attention. “The winters are the time when a lot of those applications fall away, and you can see which projects are actually long-term sustainable, like both in their models and in their teams and their people,” said Buterin.

Buterin, a 28-year old crypto billionaire, stated that individuals who are “deep into crypto and especially building things” don’t mind a bear market. “They welcome the bear market because when there are these long periods of prices moving up by huge amounts as it does — it does obviously make a lot of people happy — but it does also tend to invite a lot of very short-term speculative attention,” Buterin further added.

If all this is correct, then it means that cryptocurrency projects will have plenty of time to make their technology even better before the next rally, which some cryptocurrency experts say may fail to happen until late 2024.

According to Du Jun, co-founder of Huobi Crypto Exchange, the next Bitcoin bull run won’t be witnessed until 2024 and will most likely take place after BTC’s fourth halving, which is projected to happen in July 2024.

The entire three previous Bitcoin halvings, including the previous one that took place in 2020, sparked subsequent growth of the price of Bitcoin as a result of a programmatic slowdown in the supply of new Bitcoin. Since it happens once after every four years, the upcoming Bitcoin halving is expected to reduce the Bitcoin block reward all the way from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.

Du reiterated that the cryptocurrency market has been moving round in cycles that are connected to halvings, citing a major crypto winter in 2018 that soon followed the second Bitcoin halving and subsequent rebound in 2017. “If this circle continues, we are now at the early stage of a bear market. Following this cycle, it won’t be until the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025 that we can welcome the next bull market on Bitcoin,” said Du Jun.

Bitcoin halving chart. Source: Natixis

Du further stated that it’s very challenging to get a prediction of the crypto market cycles correctly since there are plenty of determinants, such as COVID-19, geopolitical tensions, and more.

Jirayut Srupsrisopa, CEO of a big Thailand-based crypto exchange Bitkub Capital Group Holdings, previously predicted a “golden period” for Bitcoin, and increased crypto markets will be witnessed in 2024 due to the Bitcoin halving.

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell also mentioned an approaching crypto winter in late 2021, noting that anything under $40,000 was a “buying opportunity.” And according to CoinGecko data, Bitcoin is currently trading at $37,653, down nearly 33% in the last 365 days.