BlockTower’s Ari Paul: Bitcoin May Never Hit Another All-Time High

BlockTower Capital CIO and co-founder Ari Paul laid out a starkly bifurcated view of the Bitcoin and crypto market on X late Monday, arguing the current drawdown could either mark a permanent peak in “organic adoption” for today’s crop of liquid tokens or simply a higher-timeframe correction before another speculative leg higher.

Paul said he’s “50%/50% between two scenarios,” framing the split as a practical portfolio problem rather than a call for a single narrative. The post landed into an already frayed tape, and quickly drew pushback from other market commentators who viewed the 50/50 framing as evasive.

In Paul’s bearish “A” scenario, the core claim is saturation: crypto has now enjoyed “every tailwind imaginable”: ubiquitous brand recognition, even political amplification, and what he described as effectively non-existent regulatory headwinds under the current US administration, yet demand and real usage have not expanded beyond prior cycles.

He pointed to experiments that fizzled, writing that “El Salvador kind of adopted and then abandoned bitcoin…not helpful or useful to their people,” and argued many apps and institutions “tried crypto, wasn’t useful to their needs in current form.”

Paul analogized the setup to the internet’s 2000-era shakeout: the idea remains world-changing, but most tokens and protocols might not survive it. He also warned liquidation risk may not be finished, noting that while “we saw some big liquidations in the market…plenty of larger ones to go potentially, pushing things far lower.”

The bullish “B” scenario leans on macro mood and market structure. Paul argued crypto could still be a beneficiary of what he called “late stage capitalism and financial nihilism,” with bitcoin and other assets drawing speculative flows and occasional demand for “fiat alternatives.”

He added that, beyond price, builders are still shipping and usage is “quietly growing” in niches — and that crypto remains a fertile arena for “coordinated pumps by the rich and powerful,” implying the incentive structure for volatility hasn’t vanished. “If these two scenarios were really 50% each,” he wrote, “a moderate allocation to crypto would be sensible due to the asymmetric upside.”

Blockchain Investment Group CIO Eric Weiss criticized Paul’s post as “classic fence-sitting,” arguing it offered “zero actionable insight.” Paul shot back that constant directional certainty is “dishonest (or idiotic),” and defended probability-weighted positioning as standard practice for traders and PMs.

“I shared the exact decision I made as a result of this analysis,” Paul wrote. “Traders and portfolio managers are always optimizing across probabilities…nothing novel there. And often the best decision is to be flat an asset, at least for a time.”

Paul also suggested Weiss’ frustration was less about the framing and more about P&L, adding he has “consistently cautioned against the buffoonish ‘number can only go up’ theocracy that led so many to take risks and make decisions they regret.”

The exchange broadened when VP of Investor Relations at Nakamoto Steven Lubka argued there’s a “60-70% probability” that most of crypto outside “Stablecoins and infrastructure for TradFi” has “run its course,” while bitcoin likely persists as a global store-of-value competitor.

Paul’s reply drilled into bitcoin’s long-run equilibrium and the business models built around it. “I could see BTC ‘surviving’ in collectible form, but imo, it’s ‘unstable’ in current form,” he wrote. “It needs to be bigger or smaller. If BTC price stabilizes, the security budget gradually dwindles to near zero. It’s already comically low relative to BTC market cap today, but that ratio will worsen substantially as inflation rewards continue declining.”

He then tied that dynamic to what he described as “extraction” by intermediaries. “Exchanges, brokerages, and custodians, are constantly profiting/extracting,” Paul wrote. “Without a constant influx of new money buying, price naturally falls due to all the extraction. If BTC just stabilized here and chugged along, very few crypto businesses survive in current form. Coinbase for example would probably face a 90%+ haircut in value.”

On the tactical side, Paul said he hadn’t traded crypto “at all in 6 months” and “narrowly missed selling most crypto when BTC got to $125k,” adding he had hoped for $135k as a medium-term high but found the selloff “deeper/longer than I expected.”

Now, with volatility rising, he said he’s trading more actively and is currently “playing from the long side” into a bounce, with plans to “re-evaluate with BTC around $90k.”

He also floated a middle-path outcome: bitcoin could trade as low as $15,000–$40,000 for a year before making new highs, potentially catalyzed by forced selling from crypto firms, including a supposed MicroStrategy-driven stress event, though he noted liquidation is not the only risk and questioned whether debt rollovers or covenants could force behavior short of a wipeout.

At press time, BTC traded at $69,178.