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Happy Wednesday,
This is your institutional newsletter, Crypto Long & Short. This week:
- Six indicators have marked the end of past crypto winters. Denny Galindo of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management checks how many are flashing now.
- Top headlines institutions should pay attention to by Helene Braun
- “Pump.fun Custom Pools: Meme-Stock Bet Meets Muted Volume” in Chart of the Week
Thanks for joining us!
Signs of Spring
by Denny Galindo, CFA, executive director, Global Investment Office, Morgan Stanley Wealth Management
Digital assets have, based on our limited historical data, generally followed a four-year rhythm. Every one of the four completed cycles has consisted of a three-year bull run succeeded by a 12- to 14-month bear market, frequently referred to as a crypto winter. It remains unclear why this pattern continues, though there are plausible top-down and bottom-up explanations. Fortunately, determining the primary root cause of the cycle is unnecessary for our analysis. Our framework for interpreting the four-year cycle involves four distinct cryptocurrency seasons. The ongoing crypto winter has largely adhered to the historical trend, but our attention has lately shifted toward the upcoming season.
Historically, based on limited data points, “crypto spring” has commenced quietly, with asset prices stabilizing while public engagement stays low. Several metrics that have historically signaled the shift from a crypto winter to a crypto spring seem present today. These observations do not constitute guarantees, and they may turn out to be false or premature indicators, but each signal warrants tracking in the coming months.
1) Cycle length: Spring has traditionally started 17 months before the supply halving or 12 to 14 months after the previous peak. September marks 17 months prior to the upcoming halving and 11 months following the preceding high.
2) Exchange and institutional stress: Prominent exchanges have collapsed or shut down right before crypto spring begins. BitMEX announced in July that it would close in September.
3) Drawdowns of 77% to 84% below prior peaks: Bitcoin’s drop of 53% (Bloomberg price data spanning October 6, 2025, to June 30, 2026) might be sufficient to serve as an indicator, though it remains shallower than declines seen in past crypto winters.
4) Bitcoin difficulty: A metric measuring how challenging it is to mine a bitcoin, difficulty typically drops at the conclusion of a crypto winter and subsequently rises to signal crypto spring. Although difficulty has dropped, it has not yet bounced back upward.
5) Thermocap multiple: The thermocap multiple functions similarly to a price-to-book ratio by comparing bitcoin’s market capitalization against the cumulative dollar amount ever paid to miners, with each coin calculated at its market price at the time of its mining. Past crypto winters terminated at single-digit multiples, yet in this cycle it only dropped to 13 times, according to Glassnode figures as of June 30, 2026. These figures do not guarantee future price movements.
6) Price action: A 50% recovery from the bottom has historically coincided with prior market troughs, though no such pattern assures future results.
Once the subsequent cycle officially gets underway, we anticipate two major debates to endure throughout:
Will bitcoin reach a new high before the next halving? During both the 2012–2016 cycle and the 2016–2020 cycle, bitcoin did not surpass its previous cycle peak until after the halving event. Conversely, during the 2024 cycle, bitcoin exceeded the 2021 peak one month prior to the April 2024 halving, according to Bloomberg statistics.
Has AI replaced crypto as the market’s leading speculative/disruptive-technology narrative? In 2020 and 2021, crypto stood out as one of the most prominent expressions of a high-liquidity, disruptive-technology market. Since 2024, however, artificial intelligence has emerged as the primary growth narrative.
Neither argument will be resolved rapidly, which explains why we are monitoring the six indicators listed above rather than waiting for a definitive conclusion.
Headlines of the week
By Helene Braun
Multiple major crypto themes intersected over the past week as bitcoin’s BTC$76,083.33 price graph displayed a golden cross that could indicate a sustained bullish trend, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong asserted that the sector will achieve regulatory certainty regardless of the Clarity Act’s outcome, and India’s wealthiest state, Maharashtra, investigated tokenizing power grids and additional state properties to secure funding for fresh initiatives.
- Bitcoin’s golden cross is here: A golden cross has appeared on bitcoin’s daily price chart, pointing to a potential long-term upward trend ahead.
- Crypto wins regardless of Clarity Act vote, Coinbase’s Armstrong says: The Coinbase chief executive told CNBC that the cryptocurrency sector obtains regulatory clarity whether or not the Senate approves the legislation on September 15.
- India’s richest state considers selling tokenized claims of its power assets to fund new infrastructure: Maharashtra is preparing a framework to tokenize state properties, including electricity transmission networks.
Chart of the Week
Pump.fun Custom Pools: Meme-Stock Bet Meets Muted Volume
Pump.fun introduced custom pools, enabling creators to pair memecoins with non-SOL assets—acting as a direct reaction to the growing meme-stock narrative. Thus far, the influence on daily trading volume has been constrained; it surged past $500M on September 10, but has since returned to the $390M–$450M bracket.
Seeking more? Get breaking cryptocurrency news from coindesk.com and market analytics from coindesk.com/institutions.
Originally published at https://www.coindesk.com/coindesk-indices/2026/09/15/crypto-long-and-short-six-signs-a-crypto-winter-is-ending.
