Here are the 3 big things that will move bitcoin and crypto prices in 2026

Bitcoin finally broke past last year’s low of nearly 80,000 and rallied in early 2026, trading around $93,300 after briefly reaching $97,000.

The nearly 7% year-to-date gain also buoyed other cryptos, bringing the biggest digital currency closer to a level that has capped previous rallies since November.

According to analysts from NYDIG Research and market maker Wintermute, the price increase so far has been mainly driven by geopolitical risks and a structural shift in how capital flows through the crypto market. The latter is also one of the three major catalysts that can push prices past current levels.

Before we get into what these catalysts are, let’s look at why the cryptos are rallying this year after last year’s boring price action.

According to Greg Cipolaro of NYDIG Research, political instability in the United States was the main short-term driver.

He pointed to the ongoing tension between Donald Trump and his criticism of the Federal Reserve and its chairman, Jerome Powell, who refused to cut interest rates at the president’s demand. Cipolaro drew comparisons to past political interference in US monetary policy, specifically Richard Nixon’s pressure on the Fed before the 1972 election.

“History shows that political interference in monetary policy is almost always bad – higher inflation, damaged central bank credibility and weaker currencies are typical byproducts,” he wrote.

Bitcoin, a non-sovereign asset with a fixed supply, could benefit from investor concerns about similar risks unfolding today.

Cipolaro also noted the broader macro environment as one of the reasons prices found support. The global money supply has peaked, and while precious metals including gold, silver, platinum and palladium have soared, BTC, as “digital gold”, has lagged behind.

“While our analysis indicates that gold and bitcoin respond to distinct macro dynamics, with effectively no correlation between them, both highlight a broader reality: on a global scale, truly non-sovereign stores of value are extremely rare,” Cipolaro wrote, suggesting that BTC may now be catching up.

There is also a reduction in “overhangs.” Tax loss sales, in which investors sell their assets at a loss to reduce gains recognized on other assets, ended at the turn of the year.

Another overhang that ended came after the Oct. 10 liquidations, which, according to BitMEX Research, left exchanges with unhedged long positions after their auto-deleveraging engines liquidated traders. As exchanges sold these long positions, prices remained lower.

And then there’s the ongoing debate about bitcoin’s “four-year” halving cycle and whether it’s dead. A halving is an event in which the reward for verifying new blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain is cut in half. This happens every 210,000 blocks, roughly every 4 years, during which bitcoin historically experiences boom and bust cycles.

Market watchers will point out that bitcoin, and by extension the broader crypto market, has seemingly traded in a four-year cycle, with BTC pumping shortly after the halving, sending the broader market soaring. This fuels speculative mania, which then descends into a bear market that ends before the next halving.

According to Wintermute, that four-year crypto market cycle may be over.

“The four-year cycle is dead,” the firm wrote about X in a recent note. “2025 didn’t deliver the expected rally, but it could mark what we look back on as the start of crypto’s transition from speculation to a more established asset class.”

Historically, crypto-native wealth has acted as a rotating pool. Bitcoin profits flowed into ether, then into other blue-chip altcoins, and finally into more speculative tokens in what became known as “altseason.”

That transmission mechanism appears to have broken down, according to Wintermute’s OTC flow data.

The firm cited a major structural change: the rise of institutional products such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and digital asset trusts (DATs).

“ETFs and DATs have evolved into ‘walled gardens.'” They provide sustained demand for large-cap assets, but do not naturally rotate capital into the broader market, Wintermute wrote.

In 2025, altcoin rallies averaged just 20 days, down from more than 60 in 2024, the firm noted. A handful of large assets absorbed the vast majority of new capital, while most of the market struggled to maintain momentum.

Retail interest has also shifted elsewhere. “With retail interests diverted to stocks, 2025 has become a year of extreme concentration,” Wintermute added, citing investor attention focused on AI, rare earth metals and quantum computing stocks.

What’s next

This rotation of capital is what Wintermute sees as the main driver, among the three other major catalysts, for the price to move higher for this year.

According to the market maker, institutional vehicles, such as ETFs and treasury firms, need to include a broader set of digital assets to drive larger price movements. Early signs of this are already visible in the market, with spot SOL and XRP ETFs being traded and filings for ETFs linked to various altcoins being reviewed.

Then there is the return of the wealth effect, where a strong BTC or ETH rally can generate capital for investors, which can then spill over into the broader altcoin market.

A final catalyst will be retail investors turning from equities back to the cryptocurrency, bringing new stable coin inflows and renewed risk appetite.

“How much capital ultimately flows back into digital assets remains uncertain,” Wintermute said. “Outcomes will depend on whether one of these catalysts significantly broadens liquidity beyond a handful of large-cap assets, and whether concentration continues.”