There is a growing view that bitcoin will struggle to rewrite its all-time high within 2026.

On March 31 local time, Cointelegraph reported that veteran trader Peter Brandt said, “We won’t see a new price high in 2026,” adding, “Probably not until the second quarter of 2027.” Bitcoin’s previous all-time high was $126,100, set in October last year. The mood is similar in prediction markets. Polymarket participants put the probability of bitcoin returning to $120,000 in 2026 at 15 percent.

Price moves are also fueling caution. Based on CoinMarketCap, bitcoin was $66,329 at the time of writing, down 3.46 percent over the past seven days. That is about 47 percent below its peak. Bitcoin fell to $60,000 on Feb. 6 to mark its low for the year, but Brandt said it might not be the bottom. He raised the possibility that bitcoin could “retest” price levels from September to October this year or drop “a bit lower,” and said that would become the low of the bear cycle and a new bull cycle would begin.

The bear-market diagnosis continued in other comments. Bitcoin analyst Willy Woo wrote on X on March 17 that, from a liquidity perspective, bitcoin was passing “about the one-third point” of a bear market. SkyBridge investment firm managing partner Anthony Scaramucci also said last week that bitcoin is in the bearish phase of a four-year cycle, and said, “If you believe something, you create a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Fund flows and sentiment indicators also sent warning signals. Bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) snapped a four-week streak of net inflows, posting net outflows of $296.18 million in the week ended Friday. The “Crypto Fear and Greed Index” has stayed in the “extreme fear” zone since March 20, and the score stood at 8 as of Monday.

Still, the outlook is not tilted in only one direction. Fundstrat Research head Tom Lee said in January that he still expects bitcoin to set a new all-time high within this year, even as he warned of the possibility of a “painful decline.”