Placeholder VC’s Chris Burniske sees one of the best long-term setups for Bitcoin building in the background – but he is clear that the real opportunity likely lies lower, with a potential test of levels near $56,000 still ahead.
On X, Burniske argues that the current sentiment environment is exactly what eventually produces outsized returns, while warning that it is still early for aggressive deployment. “There’s so much pessimism and short-term thinking on crypto assets these days that the R/R is tilting towards optimism and long-term, sized, high-conviction positions in distressed, public, cryptoassets,” he writes. “That said, the time isn’t yet now, imo.”
Bitcoin Bear Market Not Over Yet
He reiterates a framework he first shared when Bitcoin was trading at $109,000: “I shared my view @ $109K that BTC only starts to get interesting < $75K, and a revisit of the 200W SMA is always possible (~$56K currently, will trend higher), with all of those numbers still representing a mellow bear.” For Burniske, a move into that band – and even a touch of the 200-week simple moving average – would not mean a structural breakdown, but a more orderly, “mellow” bear market reset. He adds a blunt caveat: “Can we go lower? Sure. Pay your taxes and let’s see what 2026 brings.”
That patience extends beyond Bitcoin to the broader crypto complex. As an example, he highlights Monad’s MON token, where Placeholder is a venture investor. He describes MON as “one of the highest quality teams to launch in the last few years,” arguing it “sits at a tenth of the FDV of previous high-flyers in its category, while having superior tech & design choices across the board.” For him, MON’s price action is symptomatic of the broader reset: “Observing discourse & price-action around MON … shows how much repricing is happening.”
Burniske sees that repricing as necessary rather than catastrophic. “More broadly, the vicious repricing happening in crypto is cathartic,” he says. “Everyone is taking their licks, and smart ones will learn and adapt.” In his framework, tokens are “liquid venture,” and the failure rate should be treated accordingly: “Most crypto assets should go to zero — this is liquid venture, what did you expect?”
The flip side is that a small minority of assets will, in his view, be marked down far too aggressively as “babies are thrown out with the bathwater.” For those, timing and conviction matter more than ever: “there are going to be a handful that reprice far too low … and having the conviction, at the right time, to be optimistic when the consensus is pessimistic will once again yield 10-100X’s.”
For now, Burniske’s message to would-be Bitcoin bottom fishers is straightforward: the structural risk–reward is improving, but a convincing bottom may still require a deeper break – potentially toward the rising 200-week moving average around $56,000 – before long-term, high-conviction capital truly steps in.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $85,872.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
