The Final Cut: Will the Rate-Cycle End in Another Bitcoin Crash?

A 25-bp Gift from the Fed
The FOMC just trimmed rates by 25 basis points—historic only in the sense that it may turbo-charge a bull run that is already on borrowed time.
With the 2024 halving now 17 months behind us, history says a cyclical top is due around December 2025. Chair Powell’s cut—and the hint of two more before year-end—gives the ≈ US-$ 7.4 trn parked in money-market funds a powerful incentive to reach for yield. Spot-Bitcoin ETFs, BTC-treasury companies and zero-friction broker apps mean the bid can arrive faster than ever.

The “Melt-Up” Script
Strategists such as Henrik Zeberg and David Hunter see equities entering a parabolic blow-off: Zeberg’s year-end target for the S&P 500 is 7,000; Hunter’s is 8,000-plus. Macro analyst Octavio Costa argues the U.S. dollar is breaking a 14-year support line—another tail-wind for anti-fiat assets. The setup rhymes with the final months of the 1999 internet bubble: liquidity up, discipline down, fireworks last.

2026: The Reckoning?
Both Zeberg and Hunter warn that the same liquidity rug will be yanked in 2026, delivering the largest crash since 1929.
Evidence they cite:

Real-economy stall signals—rising housing inventory, surging loan delinquencies.
The end of a 50-year debt super-cycle and an unprecedented deleveraging.

If the real economy buckles, the financial economy—crypto included—follows.

Bitcoin’s 200-Week Line in the Sand
Even without a global macro implosion, BTC has a habit of giving back the halving moonshot:

2018: –84 %, low prints 20 % below the 200-week simple moving average (SMA).
2022: –77 %, low tags the 200-week SMA near US-$ 15.5 k.

Today that SMA sits at ≈ US-$ 52 k; a final spike could push it to US-$ 65 k by early 2026. A repeat draw-down would therefore target US-$ 50–65 k at minimum—and potentially far lower if the unwind is systemic.

History Rhymes, It Rarely Repeats
No one rings a bell at the top. Rate cuts can extend the party longer than skeptics imagine, and fiat debasement may ultimately limit how hard hard-money assets fall. But the path is narrowing: parabolic up, cathartic down. Traders should mark the 200-week SMA as the line between “healthy correction” and “generational crash.”