@ki_young_ju
The on-chain analyst who runs the data terminal half the market quotes — and who changes his mind in public, loudly, with a timestamp. Inside thirteen weeks in 2026 he called an 18-month bear market, told holders relief was coming, then declared the bear cycle over. Only the middle one has paid so far. He is worth tracking anyway, because he leaves the whole record standing — including the parts that make him look bad.
In short. Ki Young Ju co-founded CryptoQuant in 2019 and turned it into one of the most-cited on-chain data providers in crypto. His public analysis runs on one idea: Realized Cap — how much real money has actually entered Bitcoin — measured against market cap to tell a bull market from a bear. That lens made him early on Terra-Luna and FTX. It has also made him reverse himself repeatedly and in public, most famously in 2025 when he declared the bull cycle over, apologised seven weeks later, and watched Bitcoin run to a new high. The same pattern shows up in 2026: a bear-until-2027 call on 29 May, then “The Bitcoin bear cycle is over.” on 25 August. He is not a level-caller — he is a regime-caller, and the regimes flip.
Born in 1992 and educated at Pohang University of Science and Technology, Ki worked as a software engineer before founding the Korean blockchain research group Planet B in 2018 and co-founding CryptoQuant with fellow alumni in April 2019. The company sells on-chain and exchange-flow data to funds and traders — South Korea's Chosun Daily called it the “Bloomberg of Crypto” — and signed on as a data provider to CME Group in July 2022. CryptoQuant's reputation was built on two early warnings: unusual Bitcoin flows ahead of the Terra-Luna collapse in May 2022, and later signals around FTX.
His public method is deliberately narrow. Realized Cap treats coins entering a wallet as a buy and coins leaving as a sell, giving an estimate of capital actually deployed into Bitcoin; comparing it to market cap tells him whether new money is moving price. When large inflows fail to lift price, he calls it a bear. When small inflows lift it a lot, he calls it a bull. It is a clean framework, and it produces confident regime calls.
It also produces reversals, and he does not hide them. On 17 March 2025 he posted “#Bitcoin bull cycle is over, expecting 6–12 months of bearish or sideways price action”, expanded it into a long Realized Cap thread on 5 April, and then on 9 May 2025 wrote: “Two months ago, I said the bull cycle was over, but I was wrong… I apologize for the incorrect prediction.” Bitcoin went on to a new all-time high that October — press coverage puts the peak near $126K. That miss sits outside the price window charted below, but it belongs on the record, and the 2026 calls below show the same reflex: on 1 February 2026 he wrote that “this bear market will likely form a wide-ranging sideways consolidation”, on 29 May he extended the bear into early 2027, and by 21–25 August he had called the bottom and the end of the bear cycle. Read him as a well-instrumented opinion that updates fast — not as a forecast you can hold him to.
Sources: x.com/ki_young_ju · cryptoquant.com · Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, Bitcoin.com News coverage
On-chain regime calls, not price levels. Ki almost never posts a target. He posts a state of the market — bull, bear, sideways, bottom-in — derived from Realized Cap versus market cap, short-term-holder profit/loss, the Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator (built from MVRV, NUPL and SOPR against their 365-day averages), and exchange/ETF flow data. The strength is that these are falsifiable, dated and rooted in real data rather than vibes. The weakness is timing: a regime signal can be structurally right and still be six weeks early or late, and his own record shows he will flip the regime call within twelve weeks when the data turns.
Currently bullish — he called the bottom on 21 August and declared the bear cycle over on 25 August. But that is a fresh reversal of a bear-into-2027 stance he held in May, so treat the bias as live and revisable rather than settled.
Seven dated, in-window statements — six of them his own X posts, one a quote confirmed on Bitcoin.com News — charted against real price. He is a regime caller, so we judge each one on what price actually did next rather than on a level being hit. The sample is deliberately unflattering in places: it opens with an on-chain all-clear posted 27% above the summer low. For the record beyond this chart window, his headline 2025 call — “#Bitcoin bull cycle is over”, March 2025 — was wrong enough that he publicly apologised for it seven weeks later.
“Bitcoin short-term holders are no longer under pressure to sell at a loss.”
An on-chain all-clear — not a target, but a published read that forced selling had stopped. It went out at $80,482, the highest price of any call on this page, and marked the top of the sample: BTC never closed more than +0.7% above it, then fell −27.2% to $58,566 by 1 July. It is −3.3% today. The indicator was doing what it says on the tin; as a signal of what came next it failed.
𝕏 Post“Bitcoin short-term holders are no longer under pressure to sell at a loss.” — @ki_young_ju↗ x.com“Since the trend turned in Oct 2025, the bear market could last until early 2027.”
The mechanism — profit-taking cascades drag investor PnL for ~18 months — was right for five weeks: BTC fell −20.5% from $73,652 to the $58,566 low. Then it wasn't. Price is +5.7% above the call today, and he abandoned the thesis himself on 25 August, roughly five months before his own deadline. We log it open because early 2027 has not arrived and BTC remains far below its 2025 peak — but he is no longer defending it.
𝕏 Post“…the bear market could last until early 2027.” — @ki_young_ju↗ x.com“The market may need a proper reset before it can build a stronger recovery, rather than continue drifting sideways.”
In a long thread telling @saylor to pause buying, he argued Strategy's bid was “more like a liquidity sink than a price catalyst” and that weak hands had not been flushed. From $62,662 the flush never came: the deepest close after it was −6.5%, and BTC then ran +28.1% to $80,268. It is +24.2% today. The recovery he said needed a reset happened without one.
𝕏 Post“The market may need a proper reset…” — @ki_young_ju on Strategy's BTC buying↗ x.com“If Bitcoin can absorb $1T+ in realized cap, another parabolic bull run remains on the table.”
Timing this well is rare: $58,566 is the lowest daily close in the entire window, and BTC has not closed below it since — +32.9% to today, +37.1% at the high. But read the call, not the chart. It is conditional on Bitcoin absorbing $1T+ in realized cap, that has not happened, and $77,841 is not a parabola. Structurally “still early, not invalidated” — so, open.
𝕏 Post“Bitcoin likely has another parabolic cycle ahead.” — @ki_young_ju↗ x.com“Some bullish Bitcoin opium is coming in the next few months to relieve your bear market pain. Just not yet. Hang in there.”
A soft call with a hard shape: relief is coming, but not yet. Both halves landed. From $63,193 the deepest close after was only −1.4%, and the relief arrived inside six weeks rather than “the next few months” — +27.0% to $80,268, +23.2% today. Note he framed it as a bear-market bounce, not a trend change; the trend change is what he claimed six weeks later.
SourceCryptoquant CEO Tells Bitcoin Holders to “Hang in There” — Bitcoin.com News↗ news.bitcoin.com“BTC looking strong here. Rallies like this in bear markets usually signal the bottom is in.”
Called into strength at $73,021 — the risky way to call a bottom — and it has held: not one daily close below that price since, +9.9% at the high and +6.6% today. He hedged with “might see a dip”; on closing prices there wasn't one. The obvious caveat is that this is the same analyst who, twelve weeks earlier, put the bear market's end in 2027.
𝕏 Post“Rallies like this in bear markets usually signal the bottom is in.” — @ki_young_ju↗ x.com“The Bitcoin bear cycle is over.”
Four words, posted at $78,974 when CryptoQuant's Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator turned positive for the first time since early October. There are six days of price behind it: −1.7% low, +1.6% high, −1.4% today. Nothing is proven either way, and BTC is still well below its 2025 peak — this is open, and will be for months.
𝕏 Post“The Bitcoin bear cycle is over.” — @ki_young_ju↗ x.comOutcomes are our read of his stated position against real price, not his own scoring. Every quote is verbatim from the linked X post or article. Fresh calls can flip as the cycle resolves — the 25 August call has six days of data behind it and is logged open for exactly that reason.
His incentives are unusually legible: he sells data, not signals. That removes the token-shill problem but introduces a different one — CryptoQuant's product is on-chain analytics, and his public posts are the shop window for it.
The business is a paid data terminal — on-chain and exchange-flow analytics sold to funds, desks and retail traders on tiered plans. His free X analysis is the marketing funnel for it, which is a cleaner alignment than paid groups but still an alignment.
CryptoQuant supplies on-chain data commercially, including a provider agreement with CME Group signed in July 2022. Institutional distribution rewards being cited, which favours strong, quotable claims.
His upside is the company he co-founded, not a trading book he publishes. He does not run a signals service or promote tokens — so when he flips regime, there is no subscription renewal riding on the flip.
“Since the trend turned in Oct 2025, the bear market could last until early 2027.”
29 May 2026 · the bear clock he later abandoned“Some bullish Bitcoin opium is coming in the next few months to relieve your bear market pain. Just not yet. Hang in there.”
10 Jul 2026 · the one that landed, early“Two months ago, I said the bull cycle was over, but I was wrong.”
09 May 2025 · the public retraction — outside this chart window, on the record anywayQuotes transcribed from his own public sources; stated views, not recommendations.
There is no video library to link. Ki publishes no podcast and hosts no channel of his own — his public output is X posts and CryptoQuant's research notes, with everything else being third-party interviews. That is exactly why every call above is a timestamped quote with a link rather than a clip.
He sits on the data side of crypto rather than the trading-desk side, and the people whose work most directly touches his are other on-chain and cycle analysts. A map of that cohort — dossier links connect them as the database grows.
The other name synonymous with on-chain Bitcoin analysis — same data, frequently opposite regime read.
Quantitative cycle analyst; where Ki reads capital flows, Cowen reads log-regression and risk bands.
Business-cycle and liquidity framing that arrives at regime calls from macro rather than on-chain data.
Not a peer — a subject. Ki spent June 2026 publicly advising Strategy to pause its Bitcoin buying.
The co-founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, a South Korean on-chain data company founded in 2019 that sells blockchain and exchange-flow analytics to funds and traders. He is one of the most-quoted on-chain analysts in crypto, posting Bitcoin market reads to roughly 434,000 followers on X.
Not publicly verified. His wealth is tied to his equity in CryptoQuant, a private company that does not disclose financials. Ignore any specific figure you see quoted — none is confirmed.
Yes, and he says so himself. In March 2025 he declared the bull cycle over; on 9 May 2025 he posted “Two months ago, I said the bull cycle was over, but I was wrong” and apologised. Bitcoin then made a new all-time high. In 2026 he called a bear market lasting into early 2027 on 29 May, then declared the bear cycle over on 25 August. Of the seven dated 2026 calls charted above, two played out, three are still open and two went against him.
Realized Cap — an on-chain estimate of how much real capital has entered Bitcoin — compared against market cap, plus short-term-holder profit/loss, exchange and ETF flows, and CryptoQuant's Bull/Bear Market Cycle Indicator. He calls market regimes (bull, bear, bottom-in) rather than price levels or targets.
Ki changes his mind when the data changes, and takes the reputational hit in public. How close is your instinct — measure it for real with a Trader Passport.
Either way, the only test that settles it is your own record. Trade live market data — no capital at risk — in a free BuyCrypt tournament with real prizes.
Informational and educational analysis based strictly on publicly available materials — his own dated X posts and dated third-party coverage, linked on each call. Not financial or investment advice. Figures are approximate and change constantly. Spotted an error, or are you Ki? Submit a correction →
Verified handles · Sources cited above · Scoring methodology · Updated 31 August 2026
