The crypto market has been experiencing a prolonged decline since the beginning of 2025, and the current situation should be viewed as a full-scale "crypto winter in the style of the movie 'The Revenant' with Leonardo DiCaprio, rather than a temporary correction, according to Bitwise's Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan:
It's important to call things by their names. This is not a "bull market correction" and not a "small dip." This is a full-fledged crypto winter in the style of 2022, at the level of "Leonardo DiCaprio in 'The Revenant'", triggered by a combination of factors from excessive leverage to mass profit-taking by early investors.
According to Hougan, the downturn is lasting longer than it seems—it has gone unnoticed because large players have entered the market. Bitcoin has fallen about 39% from its peak, Ethereum by 53%, but the decline could have been stronger.
The scale of losses in 2025 was masked by inflows into exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and purchases of cryptocurrencies by corporate holders (Michael Saylor's strategy and its analogs).
Nevertheless, Hougan pointed to progress in regulation, institutional adoption, and signs of interest in cryptocurrency from governments. In his opinion, these factors indicate that the market is closer to the end of the downturn than to its beginning.
Bitwise positions itself as one of the largest and fastest-growing cryptocurrency asset management companies. It offers a wide range of investment instruments, including spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Solana.