Benjamin Cowen, founder of Into The Cryptoverse, posted a brief note on Monday that quickly spread across crypto social media. “I was wrong,” he wrote. “Not going to make excuses. I deserve to be dunked on.”
This marked a public retreat from the view that Bitcoin’s four-year cycle still pointed to a later, deeper low. Cowen has spent much of 2026 arguing that the most likely cycle bottom would arrive in October, after an October 2025 peak near $126,000. Bitcoin has since rebounded from summer lows near $58,000 toward the low $80,000s, putting pressure on that calendar.
Michael Saylor, a long-term Bitcoin maxi and Executive Chairman at Strategy Inc., replied, “Welcome ₿ack.” The exchange landed on the same day Strategy disclosed another 950 BTC purchase, lifting its holdings to 846,000 BTC.
The October 2026 cycle call
Cowen’s base case was set out months earlier. In a February post, he wrote that “the most likely low for BTC is October 2026, based on the 4 year cycle.” He added that a May low was possible if countertrend rallies stayed short and drawdowns arrived early. “I favor October over May for now,” he said, “but as an investor we have to be aware that markets can always evolve in ways we do not expect.”
That timing sat on a simple historical template. Prior Bitcoin bear markets often lasted about a year from the cycle high. In a June video titled When does Bitcoin finally bottom?, Cowen said a top in early October 2025 would put the next low “around a year later,” or “early October… plus or minus a week.” He also flagged on-chain levels he wanted to see tested, including realized price near $53,000 and balanced price near $38,000.
A companion video, Bitcoin: A Path to the Bottom, sketched a midterm-year path of a summer low, a bounce, then a final drop into the fourth quarter. He said he would “guess October” if forced to pick a month, while stressing the low did not have to land on that exact date. In Bitcoin: Bottom Indicators to Watch, he listed MVRV Z-score and one-year return as checks that had not fully printed at prior cycle floors.
The practical advice was less dramatic than the calendar. Cowen repeatedly told followers to treat the first half of a midterm year as a period to wait and to dollar-cost average in the second half rather than time the exact bottom. That framing became a flashpoint after Bitcoin put in a July low and then recovered, a debate that also ran through earlier coverage of whether $60,000 was already the bottom.
What changed in September
The immediate test was technical, not philosophical. After an early-September selloff around a golden-cross setup, Cowen wrote that dumps into that signal had appeared in both late bears and early bulls. The next print would matter more than the dump itself: a higher high and weekly closes above the 50-week simple moving average would “materially weaken the bear case.” A lower high rejected at that average would keep a fourth-quarter low “right on schedule.”
By September 18 he noted that Bitcoin was “in the rally now after the golden cross dump.” Three days later came the admission. The post did not declare the bear market over, and it did not publish a new price target. It did concede that the market had moved against the later-low path he had favored.
That distinction matters. Cowen has said cycle lows are “not an exact science” and can arrive a little early or late. He has also argued that Bitcoin falling below the 200-week moving average in the second half of a midterm year does not, by itself, prove the four-year pattern failed. The Monday post is narrower: the October-weighted downside case he had treated as most likely no longer fits the latest price action as cleanly as it did in spring and summer.
The market backdrop is mixed. Bitcoin remains well below the 2025 high. Institutional buying has continued in pockets, including Strategy’s latest add. Separate research, including a Binance H1 review, had still treated a late-2026 window as plausible after a first-half decline. Cowen’s note does not settle that debate. It records that one of the cycle’s most visible quantitative voices is no longer defending the October low as his central case.
For readers, the useful part is the method, not the dunking. Cowen built a public record around dates, moving averages, and prior midterm years. When price failed to follow that script, he said so in public, without a hedge. Whether Bitcoin now holds the rebound or fades into the quarter he once circled remains an open market question.
At the time of publishing (1:00 PM UTC, September 21), Bitcoin was trading at $85,260, up 6% in the past 24 hours—as per CoinGecko data.
Also read: Bitcoin Price Rallies to $85K as Recycled Clarity Act Claim Spreads
