Bitcoin (BTC) is climbing again, but the analyst who runs one of crypto's most watched on-chain firms says the real bull market still has not arrived.
Ki Young Ju Flags Bull Score
Ki Young Ju, founder and chief executive of on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, posted the warning to X on May 22. He pointed to the firm's Bull Score Index, a metric he has tracked through several market cycles.
"Once the real Bitcoin bull run begins, all signals will be very clear," he wrote, adding that the market has not reached that stage.
The Bull Score Index pulls together ten on-chain and market indicators, among them the MVRV Z-Score, Trader Realized Price, and Stablecoin Liquidity.
It counts how many of those metrics flash bullish, then multiplies the tally by ten.
A reading above 60 signals a bullish phase, while anything under 40 points to bearish conditions. The index sat in red territory through the fourth quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, but Bitcoin's recent recovery has nudged it back into the neutral 40 to 60 band.
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Why The Caution Matters Now
The neutral reading is a thin signal, and history explains why Ju is reluctant to call it more than that. CryptoQuant research head Julio Moreno noted that the index entered neutral ground in March 2022, then prices resumed their slide for months.
Other analysts read the on-chain picture differently.
Long-term holder supply, the coins held more than 155 days, has broken out of a 2.5-year downtrend, a shift analyst James Van Straten describes as the work of the market's steadiest hands.
That cohort now sits near a record 16.3 million BTC, having added more than 2 million coins through the bear market. Van Straten argues the buildup helps explain why the old four-year cycle no longer governs Bitcoin the way it once did.
At publication, Bitcoin traded near $76,800, down more than 5% over the past week.
Bitcoin Cycle Calls Recap
Ju's measured tone fits a pattern of shifting reads on this cycle. In March 2025 he declared the bull cycle "over" and braced for sideways action, then retracted that view in May after Bitcoin pushed past $100,000, crediting steady ETF inflows for reshaping the market structure he once relied on to forecast tops and bottoms.
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