A research note from Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, circulated widely this week after drawing attention to an analytical framework that few mainstream commentators had been applying to Bitcoin’s current decline. Rather than measuring Bitcoin‘s price performance against the U.S. dollar — the default lens for most market commentary — the firm’s research director examined how Bitcoin has fared when priced in gold, and what historical patterns suggest about where the current cycle stands.
The findings were striking. In dollar terms, Bitcoin peaked in October 2025 at approximately $126,000 and has since experienced a prolonged decline. If the current cycle follows the historical pattern of twelve to thirteen months from peak to trough, the dollar-denominated bottom might not arrive until late 2026. That would imply another six to nine months of potential pain for investors measuring their performance against the greenback.
But when Bitcoin is priced in gold rather than dollars, the timeline looks very different. Bitcoin reached its peak relative to gold in January 2025, several months before its dollar-denominated top. Applying the same twelve to thirteen month historical pattern to the gold-denominated chart places the potential bottom around February 2026, with a recovery potentially beginning in March. The divergence arises because gold rallied sharply during the same period that Bitcoin was declining, driven by the same macro uncertainties — geopolitical conflict, inflation risk, and institutional safe-haven demand — that made gold attractive as capital rotated out of risk assets.
The practical implication of the analysis is that investors who benchmark themselves against gold may already be through the worst of the drawdown, while those measuring against dollars still have more ground to cover. For crypto-native investors who entered the market expecting Bitcoin to outperform fiat currencies over time, the gold framework offers a more nuanced picture of where in the cycle they might actually be.
The note also highlighted a trend that has been receiving growing attention in on-chain analytics: the behaviour of large-scale investors, often referred to as whales, during the current downturn. Rather than liquidating holdings in response to falling prices, a significant cohort of large wallets has been adding to positions. Two prominent Abu Dhabi sovereign investment vehicles — Mubadala Investment Company and Al Warda Investments — both disclosed additions to their spot Bitcoin ETF positions in mid-February, even as prices continued to decline. The pattern of institutional accumulation during price weakness echoes the behaviour of long-term holders in previous bear markets.
The Mercado Bitcoin analyst was careful to avoid claiming that the bottom was definitively in. Markets do not follow historical patterns with mechanical precision, and the current environment contains variables — an active Middle East conflict, a potentially prolonged Federal Reserve hold on interest rates, and the ongoing effects of trade policy uncertainty — that make cycle comparisons imprecise. What the analysis does suggest, however, is that the statistical probability of being in the optimal average-cost accumulation zone has increased as prices have remained depressed, regardless of whether any individual knows exactly when the recovery will begin.