After a tumultuous 2022, crypto investors are trying to figure out when the next bitcoin bull run could be.
Last week, at a crypto conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland, CNBC spoke to industry insiders who painted a picture of 2023 as year of caution. Bitcoin is expected to trade within a range, be sensitive to the macroeconomic situation such as interest rate rises and continue to be volatile. A new bull run is unlikely in 2023.
However, experts are looking to next year and beyond with optimism.
While bitcoin has gotten a small bump at the start of the year, in line with risk assets like stocks, experts say bitcoin is unlikely to retest its all-time high of just under $69,000 but it may have bottomed.
“I think there’s a little bit more downside, but I don’t think there’s going to be a lot,” Bill Tai, a venture capitalist and crypto veteran told CNBC last week.
“There’s a chance that [bitcoin] kind of has bottomed here,” adding that it could fall as low as $12,000 before jumping back up.
Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at CoinShares, said bitcoin is likely to be rangebound trading at the lower end between $15,000 and $20,000 and on the upper end between $25,000 to $30,000.
She said a lot of the “forced selling” that happened in 2022 as a result of collapses in the market is now over, but there isn’t much new money coming into bitcoin.
“I don’t think there’s a lot of forced selling remaining, which is optimistic,” Demirors told CNBC Friday. “But again, I think the upside is quite limited, because we also don’t see a lot of new inflows coming in.”
Investors are also keeping one eye on the macroeconomic situation. Bitcoin has proved to be closely correlated to risk assets such as stocks, and in particular, the tech-heavy Nasdaq. These assets are affected by changes in interest rates from the Federal Reserve and other macroeconomic moves. Last year, the Fed embarked on an aggressive interest rate hike path to try to tame inflation, which hurt risk assets along with bitcoin.
Industry insiders said a change in the macro situation could help bitcoin.
“There could be catalysts that we’re not aware of, again, the macro situation and the political environment is fairly uncertain, inflation continuing to run quite hot, I think is a new thing. We haven’t seen that, you know, in 30, 40 years,” Demirors said.
“So who knows, as people look to make allocations going into the new year where crypto will fit into that portfolio?”
Timing the next bitcoin bull run
In CNBC’s interviews, several industry participants spoke about historical bitcoin cycles, which happen roughly every four years. Typically, bitcoin will hit an all time high, then have a massive correction. There will be a bad year and then a year of mild recovery.
Then “halving” will happen. This is when miners, who run specialized machines to effectively validate transactions on the bitcoin networks, see their rewards for mining cut in half. Miners get bitcoin as a reward for validating transactions. The halving, which happens every four years, effectively slows down the supply of bitcoin onto the market. There will ever only be 21 million bitcoin in circulation.
Halving usually precedes a bull run. The next halving event takes place in 2024.
Scaramucci called 2023 a “recovery year” for bitcoin and predicted it could trade at $50,000 to $100,000 in two to three years.
“You are taking on risk but you’re also believing in [bitcoin] adoption. So if we get the adoption right, and I believe we will, this could easily be a fifty to one hundred thousand dollar asset over the next two to three years,” Scaramucci said.
Tai meanwhile said the beginning of a bull run is “probably a year away,” saying the after effects of the FTX collapse might continue to be felt for another six to nine months.
Jean-BaptisteGraftieaux, global CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp, told CNBC last week that the next bull run could come over the next two years, citing rising interest from institutional investors.
However, Demirors warned that the events over 2022 “have caused tremendous reputational damage to the industry and to the asset class,” adding that “it will take some time for that confidence to return.”
The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025.
Kazuhiro Nogi | Afp | Getty Images
Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 9.17% Wednesday, as technology stocks in Asia declined, tracking losses in U.S. peers overnight.
The Japanese tech-focused investment firm saw shares drop for a second consecutive session, following its announcement of a $2 billion investment in Intel. Intel shares rose 6.97% to close at $25.31 Tuesday stateside.
Stock Chart IconStock chart icon
SoftBank Group shares
Other Japanese tech stocks also declined, with semiconductor giant Advantest falling as much as 6.27%. Meanwhile, shares in Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron were last seen trading 2.46% and 0.75% lower, respectively.
Technology companies in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, also fell after U.S. tech stocks dropped overnight spurred by declines in artificial intelligence darling Nvidia‘s shares.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is considering the federal government taking equity stakes in semiconductor companies that get funding under the CHIPS Act for building plants in the U.S, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The U.S. CHIPS and Science Act seeks to boost the country’s semiconductor industry, scientific research and innovation.
Shares of Taiwanese chip company TSMC and manufacturer Hon Hai Precision Industry — known globally as Foxconn — declined 1.69% and 2.16%, respectively. TSMC manufactures Nvidia’s high-performance graphics processing units that help power large language models, while Foxconn has a strategic partnership with Nvidia to build “AI factories.”
Meanwhile, South Korean tech stocks mostly fell with shares of chipmaker SK Hynix down 3.33%. Samsung Electronics, however, rose 0.75%.
TSMC, Samsung and SK Hynix are among companies that have received funding under the CHIPS Act.
Over in Hong Kong, the Hang Seng Tech index lost 0.87% in early trade.
CEO of Palantir Technologies Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on July 15, 2025.
Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images
Palantir‘s stock slumped more than 9% on Tuesday, falling for a fifth straight day to continue its pullback from all-time highs.
The artificial intelligence software provider’s stock has slid more than 15% over the last five trading sessions, after a stellar earnings report earlier this month propelled shares to all-time highs. The report was Palantir’s first-ever $1 billion revenue quarter.
Tuesday’s dip coincided with a broader market pullback.
Palantir is the most significant gainer to date in the S&P 500 in 2025, up more than 100%.
Read more CNBC tech news
Shares have more than doubled as the company benefits from ongoing AI enthusiasm, scooping up government contracts with President Donald Trump pushing to overhaul agencies.
Palantir’s ascent has pushed the company into a list of top 10 U.S. tech firms and 20 most valuable U.S. companies, while also making shares incredibly expensive to own. Its forward price-to-earnings ratio, which tracks future earnings relative to share price, has soared past 245 times.
By comparison, technology giants such as Microsoft and Apple carry a P/E of nearly 30 times and rake in significantly greater quarterly revenues. Meta‘s and Alphabet‘s P/E ratios hover in the 20s.
The data analytics software vendor said Tuesday that it’s raising a funding round that values the company at over $100 billion. That would make Databricks just the fourth private company to eclipse the $100 billion mark, following SpaceX, ByteDance and OpenAI, according to data from CB Insights.
Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan that the total round will exceed $1 billion. The company was last valued by private investors at $62 billion in a $10 billion financing round late last year.
In June, Databricks executives told investors the company was forecasting $3.7 billion in annualized revenue by July, with 50% year-over-year growth.
Snowflake, one of Databricks’ top rivals, is expected to generate $4.5 billion in revenue for the fiscal year that ends in January, representing annual growth of 25%, according to LSEG. Snowflake currently has a market cap of about $65 billion. Other competitors include cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft, which are also Databricks partners.
Ghodsi said he heard from a lot of interested investors following Figma’s IPO late last month. Shares of the design software company more than tripled in their New York Stock Exchange debut, a sign that public investors are seeking out tech offerings after in extended lull in the IPO market.
“My phone was blowing up,” Ghodsi said on Tuesday. “So yes, there’s definitely been a big push from outside.”
Figma shares have since retreated from their initial $115.50 closing price. The stock is trading at about $70, still more than double the $33 IPO price.
Ghodsi said the round will help Databricks invest in products that clients can tap when using artificial intelligence models.
Founded in 2013 and based in San Francisco, Databricks ranked third on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list. As of June, the company employed 8,000 people. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners Thrive Capital and WCM Investment Management are buying shares, a spokesperson said.