The liquidity cycle just broke bitcoin, with Michael Howell, Founder at CrossBorder Capital

Marc Baumann and Sangam Bharti

Mar 02, 2026

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Hi, it’s Marc. ✌️

There's a chart making the rounds right now. Gold at $5,400. Bitcoin at $66,000. One is at an all-time high. The other is down 47% from its October peak of ~$126,000. Same "store of value" thesis that the crypto community sold to investors over the last 5 years. Wildly different outcomes. We sat down with the man who saw it coming.

Dr. Michael Howell, one of the world’s foremost authorities on global liquidity, founder of CrossBorder Capital and creator of the Global Liquidity Index, told us why: the 65-month liquidity cycle peaked in Q3 2025. The downswing is just beginning and will likely last through 2027. Every risk asset is exposed.

“Bitcoin is the most liquidity-sensitive asset on the planet. If liquidity goes down, you’ll see it first in Bitcoin.”

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About Michael: Dr Howell spent decades at Salomon Brothers and Barings. He has advised the World Bank on capital flows and pioneered the Global Liquidity Index, a framework that tracks money flowing through financial markets across nearly 90 countries. He runs Capital Wars, one of the top-ranked financial publications on Substack. His institutional service provides data to quant funds and investment managers globally.

In short: When Howell says the liquidity cycle has peaked and risk assets face a rough ride into 2027, he’s not guessing. He’s reading a framework that has called every major inflection point for decades.

Bitcoin is down over 50% from its highs. Crypto markets lost over $2 trillion in capitalisation. Every risk asset got hit at once. Michael’s model forecasts the peak, and now it’s forecasting the duration and depth of the downturn.

“Markets have trends, and those trends could be actually really quite exciting. I’m very upbeat about gold and Bitcoin in the long term. I think they’re fantastic assets. But the problem is there’s a cycle, and we can’t forget the cycle.”