Opinion
|6 min ReadCoinbase Report: Rejects seasonality as DATs power Q4 rally
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
The window opens: liquidity, cuts, and momentum
If you wait for the perfect month, you miss the trade. The setup is here. Liquidity looks resilient. Macro helps. Regulation does not stand in the way. Coinbase Research says the bull has room in early Q4 2025.
They called the low in 1H25. They projected new all-time highs in 2H25. That view was not consensus. It is now the path. The team expects Federal Reserve cuts on September 17 and October 29. The labor market shows real weakness. Cheaper money pulls sidelined cash back into risk. In August, they argued lower rates could release part of the $7.4T sitting in money market funds.
Energy is the swing risk. If oil spikes, inflation can wobble. Today that risk looks contained. OPEC+ agreed to increase oil output again. Global demand cools. Sanctions on Russia could push prices. Coinbase does not see levels that flip the economy into stagflation. The runway holds.
The blueprint: corporate DATs keep buying
This cycle runs on digital asset treasuries, or DATs. These are corporate vehicles that buy and hold crypto on balance sheets. We are past early adoption. We are not near the end. We are in a player versus player phase. Execution and timing beat copycats.
Early leaders like MicroStrategy enjoyed premiums to net asset value. Competition, execution risk, and rules compressed those mNAV premiums. The scarcity bonus is gone. The bid is not. Bitcoin-focused DATs now hold over 1M BTC. That is about 5 percent of circulating supply. Top ETH DATs own around 4.9M ETH worth
1.8B as of September 10. The machine keeps running.Chart 1. ETH DATs have continued to ramp up their purchases
The funding wave is real. In August, the Financial Times reported that 154 US-listed companies raised about
33.6B. Capital now targets SOL and other altcoins too. Forward Industries raised $1.65B to fund a SOL-based DAT led by Galaxy Digital, Jump Crypto, and Multicoin Capital.Scrutiny rises with size. Recent reports say Nasdaq is tightening oversight of DATs. Shareholder approval for some deals. Better disclosures. Nasdaq clarified there is no formal press release on new DAT-specific rules. Translation. Big players stay active. Smaller DATs may consolidate. Large caps keep absorbing flows. Markets stay supported.
The myth: calendar trades do not drive bitcoin
Investors love a calendar story. September was red six years in a row from 2017 to 2022. The 10-year average for September is a negative 3 percent. That sounds scary. It failed in 2023 and 2024. Coinbase ran the math across methods. Month labels do not predict direction. They use log returns to track compounded growth. That fits bitcoin’s volatility.
Chart 2. Monthly BTC log returns heatmap
Wilson confidence intervals say no month clears significance once you handle small samples. High months like February and October overlap the average. Low months like August and September overlap too. It is variance, not a rule.
Chart 3. Positive log returns rate for BTC with 95% Wilson confidence intervals
Logistic regression compares each month to January. Odds sit near 1.0. Bands cross 1.0. No edge appears.
Chart 4. Logistic regression – odds of positive/negative monthly BTC log returns versus January (baseline)
Out-of-sample tests confirm it. A simple base rate wins. Bitcoin has about 55 to 57 percent positive months over time. The month-of-year model miscalibrates. At 27 percent predicted, realized was about 50 percent. In the midrange it is only close. At the high end it over-promises.
Chart 5: Out of sample prediction accuracy of month-of-year (MoY) logistic regression model
Placebo shuffles tell the same story. The observed joint test p-value is 0.15. About 19 percent of random shuffles hit as small or smaller. That is common under randomness. Real month labels add no signal.
Chart 6. Placebo p-values from shuffling “month” labels in logistic model
Controls do not save it. Adding Lunar New Year and halving windows makes predictions worse by Brier score. Every bar drops below zero. Extra flags just add noise.
Chart 7: Brier improvement scores for out of sample forecasts using a logistic model with added controls
Here is the real edge. Policy loosens. Liquidity stands up. DATs keep bidding. The calendar does not pay you. Flows pay you. If you wait for a lucky month, you hand your gains to someone else. Fortune favors the bold. Act while the runway is clear.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.