What is crypto waiting for? 🤷‍♀️

Happy New Year and welcome to a fresh start in 2026!

If you’ve entered the crypto market anytime in the last few years, you’re likely itching for this bull run to ignite. Many expected a 2025 peak, and this cycle extension has caught us a little off guard. So I’ll address the question a lot of investors are probably asking right now.

What is crypto actually waiting for?

The truth is, I can give you the short answer in one word: liquidity!

The longer answer comes down to three key components:

Where liquidity comes from
Why it’s been delayed this cycle
What that means for the next phase of the market

So let’s unpack it properly.

First, what is liquidity (in plain English)?
The term ‘liquidity’ simply refers to the amount of money available to flow into assets.

When liquidity is abundant, money moves easily into things like shares, property and crypto. It’s when risk appetite for investors increases and prices in markets tend to rise. But on the flipside, when liquidity tightens, the environment becomes cautious, investors sit on their hands and risk assets (which crypto is classified as) tend to stall or even pull back.

I’m sure you can relate if you think about your own finances. When you’ve got surplus cash, you’re more comfortable investing, spending or taking a bit of risk. But when money feels tight, you naturally pull back and become more cautious with your spending. Markets behave in a similar way, just on a much bigger scale.

So when people ask ‘why hasn’t the bull market started yet?’, what they’re really asking is ‘why hasn’t liquidity returned yet?’

Which brings us to the next piece.

Where does liquidity come from?
Liquidity is largely driven by central bank and government policy, especially in the US. And what happens there usually ripples through global markets, including Australia.

Over the last few years, central banks have been in ‘fight mode’ against inflation, which jumped to its highest levels seen in decades around 2021–2022. To try to bring prices back under control, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and others all started lifting interest rates quickly, and at roughly the same time. So in simple terms, they made borrowing more expensive almost everywhere at once. That’s resulted in:

– Higher interest rates
– Less easy money and liquidity in the system
– A reduced appetite for risk

This tightening phase has dragged on longer than many expected, and it’s felt particularly restrictive, especially for investors who’ve lived through previous cycles. In the past, liquidity started flowing much earlier in the cycle. This time, it didn’t.

So why were the liquidity injections delayed?

To understand that, we need to zoom out and look at the broader business cycle.

How the bigger picture shapes markets
Historically, Bitcoin halving events have been followed by a fairly predictable pattern that eventually led to bull market peaks. But this cycle collided with a very different macro environment. Instead of rate cuts and stimulus, which we’d normally expect to see by this stage. We got:

– Inflation sticking around longer than expected
– High interest rates staying in place
– Central banks delaying any meaningful easing

In other words, the business cycle itself was pushed back, giving us a more extended cycle.

So when is liquidity actually expected to return?
This is the part everyone wants a date for, and the honest answer is that liquidity doesn’t come back because we’ve circled a date on our calendar. We’re largely waiting for governments and central banks, and the typical path goes something like this:

Inflation has to cool off enough that central banks feel safe easing up.
Economic growth slows, so they don’t need sky-high rates anymore.
Interest rates stop climbing, maybe even start dipping with some cuts. That’s when liquidity (the easy money floating around) can start to build behind the scenes.
Riskier investments like stocks or crypto usually perk up in response.

The good news is that crypto doesn’t tend to sit around waiting until the final part of this sequence. In fact, prices have often jumped ahead of time, just on the expectation that better times are coming. So it can feel a little boring, and like we’re waiting around for nothing, but under the surface, conditions are gradually shifting.

What this means for crypto investors
In my opinion, the exciting part of this bull market has not been cancelled; it’s simply been delayed. Which means if you’ve just joined the crypto market, you have been given the gift of time that many never anticipated.

And for those of us who are already positioned? We have the choice: accumulate more of our chosen cryptos, or simply wait a bit longer for the cycle to play out.

As always, our focus remains on education over emotion, context over noise, and understanding what’s happening behind the scenes, not just what prices are doing today. This market doesn’t often reward impatience, but it does reward preparation.

With that said, I hope you’ve had a great start to the new year and are feeling optimistic about what’s ahead for 2026. I believe it’s going to be a fantastic year for investors.