U.S. Tiger Securities now characterizes Bitcoin as operating in a fresh bull-market regime, reaffirming a Buy rating and setting a cycle target of $250,000 to be reached by 2029 or earlier, analyst Bo Pei said.
Pei framed the shift as the result of technical and demand-side indicators. He pointed to the emergence of higher lows and higher highs and a recovery that has lifted prices above important investor cost bases. Those developments, he said, represent a departure from the firm's prior "late-bear-market" assessment issued in July.
ETF activity is a central component of Pei's thesis. He argued that renewed buying through exchange-traded funds "adds evidence that demand is recovering alongside price." The analyst observed that the August 17 through September 21 window saw $4.20 billion in net ETF inflows, reversing $8.42 billion of outflows recorded over eight consecutive weeks from May through early July. Notably, the $937.3 million inflow on September 21 was the largest single-day ETF inflow since the October 2025 cycle peak, according to Pei.
Pei also examined Bitcoin's behavior during recent policy events. He said anticipated headwinds - including a Clarity Act setback and the Federal Reserve's 25-basis-point rate hike - did not interrupt the cryptocurrency's uptrend. During the policy week, Bitcoin's drawdown totaled 5.9%. Moreover, the lowest price recorded in the 24 hours following the Fed decision was only 1.0% below the level that prevailed before the decision. The subsequent recovery pushed Bitcoin past its May high of $82,814 and produced a 49.1% gain measured from the July trough.
On short-term market metrics, Pei noted that Bitcoin briefly dipped below what he called the "True Market Mean" in the $76,000-$77,000 area, but crucially it remained above the short-term-holder cost basis and eventually recovered above both measures. That pattern, he suggested, supports the case that supply held by recent buyers has not been forcefully dislodged.
Pei incorporated the gold market into his long-term valuation framework. The $250,000 target is a synthesis of a gold-relative valuation anchor and an on-chain cost-basis cross-check. Using a 21 million terminal-supply assumption for Bitcoin, the $250,000 target corresponds to a network valuation of $5.25 trillion, which Pei said equals 16.9% of gold's estimated market value - near the lower bound of the firm's initial 15%-25% allocation range.
The analyst noted that if gold were to appreciate by 20%-30%, the implied Bitcoin-to-gold ratio would fall to roughly 13.0%-14.1%, meaning a higher gold price would permit the $250,000 Bitcoin target to be met with a smaller relative shift in allocation toward Bitcoin.
Pei quantified the growth pathway required for the target and characterized it as more moderate than in previous cycles. He estimated that Bitcoin's on-chain cost basis would need to reach between $147,000 and $167,000, implying annualized growth of approximately 24%-29% over three years. By comparison, he said, the pace following the April 2023 recovery signal was about 39% annualized.
Methodology note: The conclusions above reflect U.S. Tiger Securities' combination of price action analysis, ETF flow tracking and a gold-relative valuation cross-check as described by analyst Bo Pei.