Bitcoin Starts 2026 in Uncharted Territory

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Friday, January 2, and today, we are catching up on everything we've missed over the last couple of weeks. Before we get into that, however, if you're enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you wanna dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly/breakdownpod. Alright, friends. Welcome back to the breakdown, another year here in Bitcoin and crypto land, and we are going to catch up on a number of the key narratives to watch as 2026 begins in the context of news that happened over the last week or so. Now, of course, price action is front of mind as we enter 2026 after Bitcoin closed last year in the red. Bitcoin is currently trading at around 89,000 and ended 2025 down by 6%. That's an extremely unusual performance for Bitcoin to the point that there is no real comparison. Every other year in Bitcoin's fifteen year history was either massively up or catastrophically down. Adding to the strangeness, 2025 was the year following the halving, which have typically been some of the biggest years on record. 2025 just wasn't a strong performance in either direction. A lot of price appreciation was front loaded into 2024 with the launch of the ETFs at the beginning of the year and the Trump bump as the election was decided. We did see a strong run up to all time highs in October, but this wasn't the parabolic blow off top we've come to expect from Bitcoin cycles. We also didn't see the typical Bitcoin crash where waves of fraud and excess unwind in huge red chunks. Explanations include the halving cycle no longer being a major driver, institutions dampening volatility, and a distinct lack of retail investors last year. But the past is the past, so how are people feeling about markets coming into 2026? One of the really notable sentiments is that speculators have moved on from crypto. Midway through December, a crypto trader called Orangey wrote in a viral tweet, I put 200 k into Robinhood to play around with some tech stocks and quantum computing, and it's up pretty good so far. It's fun to trade actual companies, lol. Now while Bitcoin traded basically flat on the year, altcoins got absolutely crushed. There's very little history of altcoins coming back from big drawdowns, and when speculative stocks are ripping, there's very little reason to be looking for altcoin winners. Maybe that will change throughout the year, but for now, the speculation is moving elsewhere. Bitcoin doesn't seem to be the subject of the same market forces that are driving altcoins into the dirt. There's still a healthy bid for Bitcoin …