THE LATEST CRYPTO NEWS

In the last week, Bitcoin’s correction took another drastic turn as prices retested the psychological $100,000 price zone, triggering heavy waves of liquidation. Although the premier cryptocurrency witnessed some rebound after, the current market price remains 19.02% away from the all-time high at $126,198. In the hope of a sustained recovery, a popular analyst with the X username PlanD has outlined one critical market condition. Related Reading: Bitcoin Valuation Reset: MVRV Slides Into Macro Correction Territory — What This Means Bitcoin 50-Week EMA Holds Bullish Structure – Analyst In an X post on November 7, PlanD shares insightful analysis on Bitcoin’s latest price movement. The prominent market expert notes Bitcoin’s bounce of $100,700 may have confirmed a bottom formation. Although price dips below $100,700 could still occur, PlanD emphasized the importance of watching out for a bullish weekly close above this crucial support level. Notably, the importance of the $100,700 price zone comes from its alignment with Bitcoin’s 50-week exponential moving average (EMA). Since 2022, this indicator has acted as a crucial metric, with price crosses often signaling a change in market trends. In the present bull run, Bitcoin has decisively retested the 50-week EMA thrice, each time resulting in a price bounce to higher levels. Amid the recent correction, Bitcoin famously hit this support zone again, which PlanD describes as critical to keeping a bullish structure for a possible rebound. As long as market bulls hold the price point above this indicator, the analyst predicts another bullish price action with potential targets between $116,000 – $120,000 in the short-term. Following a steady recovery, PlanD’s further analysis suggests that Bitcoin maintains strong upside potential, with its current momentum aligning with an ascending channel that began in late 2024 and projecting a possible move toward $176,000. In parallel, a broader cup-and-handle formation has been developing since 2023, signaling an even larger long-term target around $340,000, reinforcing the bullish outlook for the asset. Related Reading: Most Dangerous Bitcoin Boom Yet? Ray Dalio Warns Of ‘Stimulus Into A Bubble’ Bitcoin Price Overview At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $102,277, reflecting a slight 0.23% loss in the last 24 hours. In tandem, weekly and monthly losses of 6.98% and 16.23% indicate that bearish sentiment remains dominant despite a modest price bounce off $100,000.  Bitcoin’s retest of the $100,000 level proved pivotal in the ongoing correction, triggering several adverse developments. These included a drop in the investors’ realized price to below $50,000, and losses among top buyers reaching approximately $0.16 billion per hour. All these events, including the subsequent price rebound all underscore the critical psychological importance of the $100,000 zone in the current market structure. Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview

Galaxy Digital has cut its 2025 year-end Bitcoin target to $120,000 from $185,000 in a new research alert circulated on November 5 and shared via screenshots on X by Alex Thorn, the firm’s head of firmwide research. In the note titled “Bitcoin Outlook Update: Lowering 2025 YE Target to $120,000,” Thorn situates the downgrade squarely in the context of a “major, multi-week selloff,” writing that “Bitcoin is trading below $100k for the first time since late June, with other cryptos faring worse.” Thorn stresses that the shift is cyclical rather than existential, stating plainly: “While bitcoin’s structural investment case remains strong, cyclical dynamics have evolved.” The firm frames the current backdrop as a decisive turn in market microstructure: “Bitcoin has entered a new phase – what we call the ‘maturity era’ – in which institutional absorption, passive flows, and lower volatility dominate.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Crashes Below $99,000: Expert Breaks Down Why That regime change helps explain both the tempered year-end target and the altered cadence of price discovery that Galaxy now expects. As Thorn puts it, “If bitcoin can maintain the ~$100k level, we believe the almost three-year bull market will remain structurally intact, though the pace of future gains may be slower.” Short-term optimism is not abandoned: “Still, we think nearing prior all-time highs before year-end is a reasonable target for short-term bulls.” Reasons For The Bitcoin Downgrade The downgrade aggregates several identifiable drags, beginning with distribution patterns across the holder base and the market’s capacity to absorb them. Galaxy writes: “Significant coin transfers from old holders to ETFs and new institutional buyers signal maturity, not weakness, but have presented headwinds.” This redistribution—whales handing supply to passive and institutional channels—may strengthen long-term ownership but has, in Galaxy’s telling, blunted near-term momentum. Positioning and leverage are the second leg of the argument. Thorn flags the “significant leverage wipeout from Oct. 10” and adds that it “continues to dent market liquidity and confidence.” The October flush sits at the center of Galaxy’s cyclical reassessment: forced de-risking weakened order-book depth just as large-holder distribution accelerated, leaving price vulnerable into the latest drawdown. A third component is the rotation of capital and narrative attention into other trades. Galaxy is explicit that “Bitcoin started the year as the hottest investment narrative, but AI, hyperscalers, gold, and the Magnificent 7 have absorbed capital and attention that might otherwise flow into BTC.” That diversion extends into crypto-adjacent plumbing as well: “Rapid stablecoin growth has redirected venture and equity interest into fintech and payments infrastructure.” The net effect, according to the note, has been a drag on incremental demand for direct BTC exposure and a tougher funding environment for pure-play Bitcoin vehicles. Retail participation, which defined prior peaks, is notably absent at sustained scale, and when it surfaces it tends to be flighty. Thorn writes: “Retail never fully returned at scale post-2021; when it did, the memecoin mania fostered short-termism that is not conducive to understanding and adopting bitcoin’s long-term value proposition.” Without sustained retail sponsorship, Galaxy expects ETF and institutional flows to “define BTCUSD behavior,” adding that “Passive Flows Dominate… lowering volatility and moderating cycles.” This, again, is part of the “maturity era” thesis rather than a repudiation of Bitcoin’s core investment case. Related Reading: ‘Bitcoin $100K Break Was Emotional’ – On-Chain Data Shows No Structural Damage Policy timing features as a missing catalyst rather than a negative shock. The note observes that “Despite positive rhetoric, no government bitcoin purchases have been announced. In general, the US government has been very quiet on the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR).” Galaxy does not ascribe immediate downside to the absence, but it removes a bullish tail event that some investors had hoped would materialize this year. Corporate treasuries and listed “Bitcoin-as-reserve” plays also receive a recalibration. Galaxy argues that the next iteration will demand business fundamentals rather than balance-sheet optics alone: “BTCTC Phase 2: The next wave of bitcoin treasury companies will mostly need revenue generation and operating businesses beyond reserve accumulation to differentiate themselves and thrive.” The firm also points to “poor performance of BTC treasury companies” as part of the year’s defining headwinds. Taken together, the factors map to a post-$100k market defined less by reflexive retail surges and more by methodical institutional accumulation. Galaxy calls it the “Post-$100k Regime,” in which “Bitcoin’s ascendance above six figures earlier this year marked the transition from early-era speculation to mature, institutionalized markets.” The conclusion threads the needle between structural conviction and cyclical prudence: “As a result of this market performance, and other factors, we are revising our 2025 year-end bullish bitcoin target from $185,000 to $120,000.” At press time, BTC traded at $103,093. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Global macro signals are flashing both warning and opportunity for Bitcoin (BTC). On one hand, major bank Standard Chartered PLC has flagged the potential for Bitcoin to dip below $100,000 in the near term. Related Reading: 16,000 Ancient Bitcoins Just Moved—And It’s Costing Whales Billions On the other hand, significant growth in global M2 money supply strengthens the backdrop for a longer-term upside. Short-Term Correction Predicted as Trade & Liquidity Risks Mount According to head of digital asset research Geoff Kendrick at Standard Chartered, Bitcoin could briefly fall under the $100,000 mark amid intensifying global risks, particularly the escalating U.S.–China trade tensions. BTC's price moving sideways on the daily chart. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview Although he deems the drop as temporary, Kendrick frames it as a “buying opportunity,” asserting this may be “the last time Bitcoin is EVER below” $100,000. He further points to shifts in capital flows, notably from gold into Bitcoin, as signs of rotation and deeper structural appeal. Technical indicators such as the 50-week moving average are cited as meaningful support zones, adding credence to his view that the correction may be short-lived. Bullish Macro Backdrop: M2 Growth & Institutional Flows Intact Despite the caution in the short run, the macro landscape offers supportive themes. Analysts note that global M2 money supply growth accounts for a significant portion of Bitcoin’s historical price variance, highlighting the asset’s evolving role beyond speculative crypto. As central banks continue to inject liquidity, Bitcoin’s correlation with broader money-supply trends reinforces its potential as a hedge or portfolio diversifier rather than purely a speculative vehicle. Furthermore, institutional interest and on-chain activity remain elevated, underscoring that this pull-back could be a healthy mid-cycle reset rather than a structural reversal. What This Means for Bitcoin (BTC) Investors In practical terms, investors should brace for potential near-term downside around or below $100,000 while keeping an eye on key support levels and macro catalysts. Kend­rick maintains his bullish target of $200,000 by year-end and even $500,000 by 2028, suggesting that the current dip could represent a long-term entry point. Related Reading: Last-Ever Bitcoin Dip Below $100,000 Looms This Week, Standard Chartered Warns At the same time, the market remains exposed to trade-war developments, Fed policy surprises, and liquidity shocks, factors that could trigger more substantial movement. A dip below $100K may feel ominous, but for some strategists, it could be the last major shopping window before the next leg higher. Cover image from ChatGPT, BTCUSD on Tradingview

Bitcoin (BTC) is holding a tight range around $121,000–$123,000 after tapping a fresh all-time high near $126,000 earlier this week. Under the surface, demand remains robust as U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs just logged an eighth straight day of net inflows, with one session alone adding $441 million. Related Reading: Why The Bitcoin Price Might Never Drop Below $100,000 Again Over the past week, cumulative ETF net flows have climbed by billions, pushing total Bitcoin ETF assets toward $160 billion. This steady pipeline of capital, now a fixture of pension funds, RIAs, and asset managers, continues to soak up more BTC than miners create, tightening free float and muting deeper pullbacks. The setup reinforces Bitcoin’s evolving role as a portfolio diversifier and inflation hedge, especially as the U.S. dollar wobbles and macro uncertainty lingers. Technical Levels Point Bitcoin (BTC) to $117K Support, $125K–$126K Ceiling After the spike to new highs, BTC is digesting gains in a sideways band. $125,000–$126,000 remains the near-term ceiling; a decisive daily close above that zone would likely unlock momentum toward $128,000–$130,000 and extend price discovery. On the downside, $117,000 is developing as the first key support, aligning with a heavy cost-basis cluster and prior breakout structure. A deeper fade could probe $114,000 near the 50-day moving average, where trend buyers may re-engage. Momentum indicators are neutral-to-constructive (RSI mid-zone, MACD flattening), consistent with healthy consolidation above rising MAs. Traders are watching for: Spot-led strength over derivatives (cleaner advances). ETF inflows staying positive (supports dips). Range break above $126,000 on expanding volume (bullish confirmation). BTC's price records losses on the daily chart. Source: BTCUSD on Tradingview Scarcity Meets Institutional Liquidity Bitcoin’s post-halving issuance of 450 BTC/day collides with institutional demand that’s arriving “on schedule” via ETFs, creating a structural supply deficit. Year to date, institutional accumulation has outpaced new supply many times over, a dynamic that historically precedes trend extensions. Add in the dollar-debasement narrative, stubborn inflation, rising debt, and policy ambiguity, and credibly scarce assets like BTC and gold remain in favor. Related Reading: $200 Million Rescue Plan: TRUMP Meme Coin Fights For Survival With net inflows recurring and macro tailwinds intact, a range break toward $130,000 looks increasingly plausible in Q4, provided $117,000 holds on dips and $125,000–$126,000 gives way on a high-volume push. Cover image from ChatGPT, BTCUSD chart from Tradingview

Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency, has made headlines this week by consistently breaking all-time highs, recently surpassing the $126,000 mark for the first time.  However, the current price action has not only drawn attention from investors but also reignited discussions surrounding a notable prediction made two years ago. An anonymous user had forecasted that Bitcoin would achieve a peak on October 6, 2025—a prediction that came to fruition just yesterday. Potential New Bear Market Ahead Despite this milestone, Bitcoin has retraced to around $121,000 within hours after today’s record, leading to a wave of liquidations from long positions across various exchanges.  This rapid price fluctuation has led many to speculate that the recent peak could potentially mark the cycle’s all-time high, suggesting that Bitcoin might soon enter a new bear market phase. Related Reading: Is A $10,000 Ethereum Price Within Reach? Here’s What Experts Are Forecasting Next The prediction made in December 2023 posits that if historical patterns hold true, the bear market low is expected to occur precisely 364 days later. This theory has gained traction amidst today’s volatility, with experts warning that a shift in market sentiment could be imminent.  Market analyst Doctor Profit has recently cautioned that despite the current bullish trend, the market is entering a precarious phase. He noted that while there is a prevailing sense of euphoria, underlying financial indicators are signaling a potential liquidity crisis. Highlighting the current situation, Doctor Profit pointed to the Reverse Repo (RRP) market, which has plummeted from a peak of $2.2 trillion in mid-2022 to a mere $8–10 billion today.  This decline raises concerns about the stability of interbank liquidity, suggesting that the financial system may soon face significant dislocations if the RRP continues to dry up. Historical parallels from 2018, 2019, and 2023 indicate that such liquidity issues often precede major market corrections. Moreover, US banks are reportedly grappling with approximately $395 billion in unrealized losses as of the second quarter of the year, putting additional pressure on their balance sheets.  Expert Sounds The Bitcoin Alarm In the crypto space, recent trends reveal substantial inflows into exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with firms like BlackRock contributing over $1 billion in Bitcoin and $200 million in Ethereum just last week.  However, Doctor Profit contends that the market’s broader liquidity picture remains concerning. While retail traders are expressing optimism about a “liquidity flood,” the expert cautions that the influx of cash into money market funds could actually drain liquidity from broader markets rather than enhance it. Related Reading: BNB Price Hits $1,240 Record High: Partners With Chainlink For On-Chain US Economic Data The current market environment is also characterized by a notable uptick in insider selling, according to the expert’s broader landscape analysis, in which executives are reportedly offloading shares at an unprecedented rate, even as retail investor inflows surge.  The expert believes that this alleged market manipulation often signals a market cycle peak, creating what he believes “a highly toxic mix” that could have adverse implications for future price movements. In conclusion, Doctor Profit notes that the overall sentiment paints a bearish picture at a macro level. Both the crypto and stock markets are seen as being at an increased risk of entering a bear market after the fourth quarter.  Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

As the Bitcoin price approaches record highs, recently surpassing the $121,000 mark, analysts are increasingly optimistic about the cryptocurrency’s trajectory for October, often termed “Uptober.” According to the analysis team at The Bull Theory, there’s a possibility that the Bitcoin price could reach as much as $143,000, meaning a potential surge of nearly 20% for the rest of the month. Bitcoin Price Poised For October Rally Such projections may seem ambitious, but historical data supports the notion that October has consistently been one of Bitcoin’s strongest months. Over the past 12 years, BTC has closed in the green during October in 10 of those years, and the correlation between strong performances in September and October is noteworthy.  Following a positive September—where the Bitcoin price recently posted a gain of 3.91%—the stage appears set for another fruitful October. Bitcoin has an impressive October win rate of 83%, having only recorded losses in the month twice since 2011.  Related Reading: Ethereum Price Forecast: Expert Predicts Final Impulse Wave Targeting $18,000 In 2014, the cryptocurrency fell by 12.95%, and in 2018, it dropped by 3.83%. This remarkable track record highlights October as one of the most profitable months for Bitcoin holders, with an average return of 20.62%.  The pattern remains consistent: every time September has closed positively, October has followed suit. Historical data from previous years shows that a green September often leads to substantial gains in October.  For instance, in 2015, the Bitcoin price rose by 33.49% after a September increase of 2.35%. Similarly, in 2023, a 3.91% gain in September translated to a substantial 28.52% increase in October. Could BTC Reach $150,000? The bullish sentiment doesn’t end there. In four out of four instances where both September and October closed positively, November also maintained the upward trend. The data showcases consistent gains: in 2015, November saw a 19.27% increase following a strong October. If Bitcoin were to replicate its historical average return of 20.62% this October, a price point around $143,539 could be on the horizon. Even if it aligns with the median return of 14.71%, investors could see new records reaching just above $136,000. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Nears Record Levels, Predictions Point To $140,000 By Early 2026 Market expert Michael van de Poppe has also chimed in on the bullish outlook for the Bitcoin price. He noted several strong technical indicators, including BTC’s ability to hold the 20-week moving average as support, breaking through a downtrend at $112,000, and positioning for the highest weekly close in its history.  Recent performance has seen a robust 11% weekly candle, further fueling optimism. Additionally, with gold experiencing a significant run, the expert suggests that the Bitcoin price appears poised to catch up.  Van de Poppe has expressed confidence that, if current trends continue, the market’s leading cryptocurrency could not only hit $150,000 this quarter but also achieve a new all-time high within the month. When writing, BTC trades at approximately $121,669, only 2% below all-time high levels above $124,000. Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com 

The time for optimistic predictions about the Bitcoin price reaching a new record is swiftly running out. Many analysts initially predicted that the market’s leading cryptocurrency would achieve a milestone of $200,000 this year.  However, as time progresses, these forecasts are being adjusted, with some traders on crypto prediction platforms lowering their price targets. Despite this, the potential for new all-time highs (ATHs) still lingers for the remainder of the year. Historical Data Points To New Records In Q4 Recently, the Bitcoin price once again surged past the significant $120,000 threshold, a level that has acted as a major resistance barrier over the past months. However, a sustained weekly close above this mark could set the stage for Bitcoin to reach new heights.  This price movement follows the release of softer private payrolls data, which has bolstered expectations for potential interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve (Fed).  Related Reading: Here’s Why Analysts Are Predicting A Massive Shiba Inu Price Rally In October According to the CME FedWatch tool, traders now estimate a 99% probability of a quarter-point reduction on October 29, a noticeable increase from 86% just a week earlier. As such, analysts from the Motley Fool remain optimistic, suggesting that the Bitcoin price could still achieve a price target of $140,000 by early 2026. Historical data supports this optimism, as Bitcoin has consistently shown strong performance in the fourth quarter (Q4).  Over the years from 2013 to 2024, the average Q4 return for Bitcoin has been an impressive 85%. Notably, in 2020, Bitcoin saw an increase of 168% in the final quarter, while in 2017, it skyrocketed by 215%. Even further back to 2013, Bitcoin posted an extraordinary return of 480%. Key Months For The Bitcoin Price Looking at the data, October and November have historically marked significant turning points for the Bitcoin price. November stands out as the most lucrative, with an average return of 46%, followed closely by October at 22%.  Related Reading: Bitcoin Calm Is Over — ‘Every Time This Happened, Price Went Vertical,’ Says Analyst Current predictions from prediction markets suggest that traders are granting Bitcoin a 63% chance of reclaiming its previous all-time high of $125,000 by the year’s end. The likelihood of Bitcoin reaching $130,000 by early 2026 stands at 47%, while the chance of hitting $140,000 has been estimated at 32%.  However, the window for achieving higher price levels is quickly closing, as evidenced by a mere 22% chance of reaching $150,000 this year and only a 5% chance of hitting $200,000. Despite the optimism, Motley Fool analysts have noted that market sentiment has soured since August. Prediction markets reflect this shift, indicating a 6% probability of Bitcoin slipping below $70,000. Moreover, there’s a 2% chance that the Bitcoin price could dip below $50,000. Featured image from DALL-E, chart from TradingView.com

In an interview with Dutch host Paul Buitink published on September 4, Henrik Zeberg, Head Economist at SwissBlock, set out a two-stage roadmap for Bitcoin and crypto: a final, powerful “melt-up” driven by liquidity and momentum, followed by a dot-com-style bust that he says will be catalyzed by a surging dollar and tightening financial conditions. “We do have the largest bubble ever,” Zeberg said, arguing that equities, crypto and real estate will first climb further before the cycle turns. “The music is still playing and you can still get a drink at the bar,” he quipped, extending his Titanic metaphor to explain why he believes sentiment and macro signals have not yet turned decisively negative. Bitcoin, Ethereum To Soar Before Dot-Com Style Crash Zeberg locates the current moment late in the business cycle but not at the point of breakdown. He points to the absence—so far—of classic pre-recession triggers in yields, credit spreads and initial jobless claims. “A crash doesn’t come out of thin air,” he said. “We simply don’t see those signals just yet.” With global liquidity improving at the margin and the Federal Reserve already “pivoting” in tone, he expects a sharp upside phase reminiscent of Japan’s 1989 finale: a rising angle that steepens into a near-vertical blow-off. At the index level, he pegs the S&P 500’s terminal run at roughly 7,500 to 8,200 from around 6,400 today. Related Reading: Bitcoin Whales Cut Back: Average Holdings At Lowest Since 2018 Crypto, in his view, will amplify the move. Zeberg expects Bitcoin to lurch first to “at least” $140,000, then top somewhere in the $165,000 to $175,000 range before the bust begins. He projects Ethereum near $17,000 on the assumption that the ETH/BTC ratio can stretch to about 0.12 in a late-cycle altcoin phase. He stressed the path would be abrupt rather than leisurely: “When things are moving in crypto and into the final phase of a bubble, it can be very, very fast.” The fulcrum of his thesis is the US dollar. Zeberg is watching closely for a DXY bottom and then a surge to 117–120—“the wrecking ball” that, in his telling, would hammer risk assets as global dollar demand spikes. “If we’re going to see somewhat of a crisis, all this debt will need to be settled in dollars,” he said, calling the greenback “still the cleanest shirt,” even if it is “getting quite nasty.” In that scenario, liquidity preference overwhelms risk appetite, credit tightens and deleveraging begins—especially outside the US, where dollar liabilities collide with local-currency cash flows. He argues that monetary easing cannot ultimately forestall a cyclical turn once the real economy rolls over. Rate cuts may initially goose markets—“You’re going to see it running up really fast”—but then “the more wise people in the market” will infer weakness rather than salvation. He thinks the Fed will start with 25 basis points this month, while leaving open the possibility of a larger shock move. Either way, he sees a relatively short deflationary bust—“six to nine months” in one formulation—followed by policy panic and, on the other side, a stagflationary phase in which “the tools of the Fed will become impotent.” He was caustic about the profession’s inflation priors, skewering what he called the “hubris” of micromanaging CPI to exactly 2% and ridiculing the decision to award Ben Bernanke a Nobel Prize for what he described as “reinventing money printing,” calling it “the most stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.” Zeberg’s commodity framework slots into that sequence. He expects gold to do its “finest duty” during a liquidity crunch—get sold to raise cash—before it reprises 2008’s pattern with a steep drawdown, then a powerful recovery. He cited the 2008 analog of a roughly 33–35% peak-to-trough decline in gold and as much as 60% in silver before the policy response set a new leg higher. Related Reading: Bitcoin Flashes Rare Buy Signal Not Seen Since $49,000 And $74,000 Bottoms Secularly, however, he projects gold “into the 2030s” at as much as $35,000 per ounce as negative real rates, balance-sheet expansion and an eventual “monetary reset” reprice money. That reset, in his vision, would anchor a new settlement system on gold and ledger-based rails—“a digital element to it,” but “not Bitcoin.” Strategy: The Largest Ponzi In The Market? On single-name risk, Zeberg delivered one of the interview’s most incendiary lines about Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. “I think we have the largest open Ponzi game when it comes to MicroStrategy,” he said. “Everybody needs to pile into the stock, then he can take on some more debt and he buys more Bitcoin.” He tied the firm’s vulnerability to his macro template: if DXY heads to 120 and “the largest bubble in the world, the Nasdaq,” suffers an 85%-type drawdown, “Bitcoin is going to have a really, really bad period—and then that means MicroStrategy is going to have that.” He called the structure “the largest house of cards we have seen in a long time” and warned that an unwind would be “really, really bad for people who think they can just hold on to it.” The characterization was his alone; he did not present evidence beyond his cyclical and balance-sheet logic, and his remarks were framed within his broader melt-up-then-bust scenario. Beyond headline tokens, Zeberg argued that “99%” of crypto projects will ultimately fail, with only a handful emerging like the Amazons that survived the dot-com washout. He distinguished between speculative coins and blockchain projects that deliver real-world utility, while cautioning that “this rampant speculation” has been prolonged by an era of easy money. As for timing catalysts, Zeberg downplayed the idea of a single trigger and instead described an environment that “becomes toxic” as high rates, falling real income and climbing delinquencies pressure banks and corporates. He is monitoring front-end yields—which he says have begun to “break some levels”—credit spreads, and the dollar’s turn. He also noted that large-cap tech’s earnings concentration has “distorted” the market and that even quality small-cap tech is likely to be dragged lower in an indiscriminate unwind. The first stage, however, remains higher. “It’s a self-propelling cycle,” he said of the melt-up, powered by FOMO and the belief that “the Fed has got our back.” At press time, BTC traded at $111,528. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Matthew Mežinskis, the analyst behind Porkopolis Economics and co-host of the “crypto_voices” podcast, told Marty Bent on TFTC that Bitcoin’s late-cycle upside remains larger than most models imply, arguing that price action continues to track a long-standing “power trend” that has governed every prior boom. Anchoring his view in percentile “bands” around that trend, he contends the market can still deliver a two-to-three-times move into year-end, placing a $250,000 to $375,000 range in play. Bitcoin 4-Year Cycle Still In Play? Mežinskis frames the thesis in stark, testable terms. “Bitcoin has traditionally during the booms very easily gotten above the 80th percentile each time,” he said, noting that the strongest phases in earlier cycles climbed “very easily” above the 90th as well. He defines the 80th percentile as roughly 1.3× the trend and the 90th as 2×. On his model, the end-2025 trend value sits near $125,000, which fixes the 80th-percentile validation line at about $170,000 and the 90th at $250,000. “If we don’t get above 170k by year end or into like the first couple months of next year then I would…rethink the idea of the four-year cycles,” he said, before stressing that “it hasn’t been invalidated yet.” Related Reading: Bitcoin In Trouble? Exchange Reserve Spikes To Highest In Months The centerpiece of his outlook is a simple rule-of-thumb extrapolation from those bands. “The 90th is 2x…so 2x is $250k,” he explained. He then extends the historical envelope to the mid-90s percentiles to size a more aggressive—but still precedent-based—target. “In 2021…it was a 96th percentile…the 2.8x—round it here—3x,” he said. “Totally base case, totally possible…would be 2 to 3x the trend…$250k to $375k Bitcoin.” Even as he embraces that range, he tempered expectations for a blow-off beyond it. “I would be very surprised if Bitcoin went above $350 or $375k by the end of the year, but I think it’s possible.” His framework is deliberately non-technical in the chartist sense. “We’re just looking at the power trend and where the price typically is over or under trend every four years,” he said. The model—represented by a “black line” he’s tracked since 2016—has, in his telling, proved more durable than the once-fashionable stock-to-flow approach: “It’s like the best trend line in all of finance…certainly better than the old stock-to-flow ratio.” The percentile overlays are frequency-based markers: the 90th denotes a level above which only 10 percent of observations sit, the 99th above only 1 percent. Historically, he observed, the most explosive cycles—2013 and 2017—briefly reached the 99th percentile, roughly 4.6× trend, a zone 2021 never touched. That “softer top” dynamic is consistent, he argues, with maturation: “As Bitcoin gets more adopted, these peaks do come down.” Pushing beyond the base case, Mežinskis addressed the outlier narratives circulating on social media. He acknowledged hearing projections in the “$444,000 in November” neighborhood and mapped them to his high-percentile bands: “400,000 is the 97th…[between] the 97th and 98th percentile, it’s pretty rare.” Those levels, at about 3½× trend, are—by definition—levels the market spends very little time above. Related Reading: Bitcoin Flashes Rare Buy Signal Not Seen Since $49,000 And $74,000 Bottoms None of this, he emphasized, is a timer. The framework “doesn’t tell you the time…we’re just assuming the four-year cycle.” If the cycle extends or compresses, the model won’t predict that path; it only sketches the altitude the market has historically achieved once a boom is underway. “If the market gets heated…if grandma’s getting excited this Thanksgiving…and giving her grandchildren money to buy Bitcoin, then perhaps it could happen again,” he quipped, before reiterating: “Absolutely possible that we have lower highs and even possible that we get out of the four-year cycle, but I’m still not seeing it based on the price action.” Mežinskis also flagged the hazards that often follow euphoria, warning that narrative shifts at elevated plateaus can coincide with leverage-driven fragility. Should Bitcoin treasury companies lever short-dated convertible debt to chase higher prices, a downturn could expose maturity and liquidity mismatches. “You could see absolutely a cascading [of] liquidations of these Bitcoin treasury companies,” he said, adding that reflexive waves can “go as high as the White House” in terms of policy attention if the cycle crescendos at scale. He was careful not to present that as a base case—“I’m not saying that it will”—so much as a reminder that what climbs on leverage can unwind through the same channel. The test he sets for the market over the next few months is crisp. A move above the 80th-percentile line—about $170,000 given his end-2025 trend—would keep the four-year template intact; a run into the 90th-percentile band would align with prior booms and mechanically prints a ~$250,000 spot price; an excursion toward the mid-90s percentiles would extend the tape to roughly $375,000, a level he calls the “max” he would expect this cycle—even if, as history shows, brief overshoots cannot be ruled out. For now, the structure that’s guided Bitcoin since 2016 “hasn’t been invalidated yet,” and until it is, Mežinskis’ message is unambiguously bullish: the bands are there, the tape has visited them before, and the upper ones still sit far above spot. At press time, BTC traded at $110,397. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Bitcoin’s (BTC) recent volatility has unsettled investors, as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap slid by more than five percent over the last two weeks. However, two key on-chain factors indicate that the BTC market structure is largely resilient. Bitcoin Remains Strong Despite Volatility According to a CryptoQuant Quicktake post by contributor XWIN Research Japan, two important on-chain indicators suggest that despite the recent slump in price, the overall market structure remains strong for the flagship cryptocurrency. Related Reading: Bitcoin Sentiment On Binance Turns Bullish – But Is The Market Setting A Trap? The first is Bitcoin’s Delta Cap – a long-term valuation model derived from the difference between Realized Cap and Average Cap – that has historically acted as a reliable floor during major cycles. In early August, BTC traded above this steadily rising line, suggesting that the market is building a stronger foundation compared to previous drawdowns. A rising Delta Cap also signals capital inflows and long-term investor conviction, even during price corrections. The CryptoQuant analyst shared the following chart showing Delta Cap hovering around $739.4 billion. Although BTC is currently trading below this line, a quick move to $120,000 would likely push the price back above it. The second on-chain factor pointing toward resilience in BTC market structure is the Coinbase Premium Gap, which currently stands at +11.6. The high positive value of the metric suggests stronger demand from US institutions, who are accumulating BTC at a premium. For the uninitiated, the Coinbase Premium Gap measures the price difference of Bitcoin between US exchange Coinbase and global exchanges like Binance. A positive gap means Bitcoin trades at a higher price on Coinbase, often signaling stronger US institutional buying demand. Historically, sustained periods of positive premium have preceded major bullish phases, as institutional accumulation drives price discovery. The analyst concluded: Together, these two metrics point toward a constructive setup: Bitcoin consolidating above $100K with strong institutional support and a long-term valuation floor steadily rising. Corrections, rather than being a sign of weakness, appear to be opportunities for accumulation within a robust structural uptrend. Is BTC Out Of The Woods? Although the two aforementioned on-chain indicators point toward strength in BTC market structure, not all analysts are as optimistic. For instance, a fall below $105,000 might send BTC all the way down to $90,000. Related Reading: Analyst Says Bitcoin Price Is Heading To $256K — Here’s When Another analyst recently warned that if BTC loses the support at $108,600 level, then it could fall further to $104,000. A failure to bounce from $104,000 could see BTC test the psychologically important $100,000 level. That said, Bitcoin’s rapidly rising illiquid supply on Binance may play a pivotal role in sending it to a fresh all-time high (ATH). At press time, BTC trades at $109,289, up 0.9% in the past 24 hours. Featured image from Unsplash, charts from CryptoQuant and TradingView.com

Top market analyst Ali Martinez has shared on-chain data that tips Bitcoin to reach a $130,000 valuation, albeit on one condition. This bullish price prediction comes following a slight 2.6% price rebound over the past two days, pushing Bitcoin within the $118,000 price range. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Could Still Tumble Down To $109,000 — This Chart Pattern Suggests So $110K Emerges As Crucial Bitcoin Support Zone – Here’s Why In an X post on July 26, Ali Martinez postulates that Bitcoin may be on track for a significant leg higher based on recent data from the MVRV pricing bands by Glassnode. However, the premier cryptocurrency must avoid losing a certain support zone to prevent an invalidation of this bullish thesis. The MVRV bands, derived from Market Value to Realized Value (MVRV) ratios, help visualize when Bitcoin is either overvalued or undervalued relative to its historical realized price. These bands function like Bollinger Bands but are grounded in on-chain fundamentals, tracking statistical deviations around the mean MVRV value. As of July 23, 2025, Bitcoin was trading at approximately $118,782, following a steady climb over recent weeks. According to the MVRV pricing model, the cryptocurrency was hovering just beneath the +1.0σ deviation band, marked at $130,756, representing the next major price resistance and target. Notably, the +1.0σ band is also interpreted as a key zone of extreme market optimism, often preceding local tops (+2.0σ) On the other hand, the model’s +0.5σ band sat at $109,858 below the current market prices, serving as a vital support threshold. Ali Marinez explains that Bitcoin must maintain its price level above this band to retain a high probability of continuation toward the +1.0σ level target based on historical patterns. However, a breakdown below $110,000 could signal a deeper correction, potentially down to the mean band at around $88,960, or lower toward $68,062 (-0.5σ). Related Reading: AVAX Ready For Range Breakout – Bulls Eye $36 Price Target Bitcoin Investors Take Profits With Rising Market Confidence According to more data from the MVRV model, the growing distance between BTC’s realized price, around $50,831, and its present market price reflects growing investor conviction. For context, the realized price represents the average cost basis of all coins in circulation, thereby indicating how deeply in profit the average Bitcoin holder is at the moment. At press time, the premier cryptocurrency trades at $118,178 following a 0.73% in the past day. However, the daily trading volume is significantly down by 53.39% and valued at $47.98 billion. According to price prediction site Coincodex, the Bitcoin market sentiment remains largely bullish, with the Fear & Greed Index nearing extreme greed at 72. Coincodex analysts project the leading cryptocurrency to maintain its current rebound, rising to $122,019 in five days and $141,075 in a month. Featured image from iStock, chart from Tradingview

The Bitcoin market recorded a minor 0.67% price gain in the last 24 hours, amid a brief return to the $118,000 price territory. This modest price increase forms part of a rebound observed over the previous 48 hours, following a significant 4% price correction earlier last week. Looking ahead to the new week, renowned market analyst with X username KillaXBT has identified two potential price development scenarios for the premier cryptocurrency. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Holds Above $115,000 — Here’s Why This Level Is Significant Bitcoin Sees Bounce From Key Demand Zone, But What’s Next? In an X post on July 26, KillaXBT provides an in-depth technical analysis of the Bitcoin market to map out the asset’s potential price trajectory in this new week. The popular market expert duly notes that Bitcoin experienced a price bounce after dipping into a key demand zone around $115,000, which they also described as an ideal long entry region. As earlier stated, the crypto market leader has since climbed to $118,000 following this price rebound. However, KillaXBT notes there is an established CME Gap around $117,071, which is likely to serve as a price magnet in the short term. For context, CME gaps are price gaps on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Bitcoin futures chart that occur when Bitcoin’s price moves significantly on the spot market when CME markets are closed, typically over the weekend. In view of next week, KillaXBT explains scenario 1 in which the Bitcoin market opens on a bullish note. In this case, the analyst states investors should expect Bitcoin to eventually form a higher low, ideally through a sweep of liquidity around the $116,000 area. However, if Bitcoin bulls can effectively hold this price pocket, it would trigger fresh long setups with stop losses tucked below the prior week’s low. In scenario 2, KillaXBT paints a more aggressive situation in which Bitcoin performs a double sweep of last week’s wick low around $114,800, thereby effecting a ruthless liquidity grab before an upward reversal. However, the market expert favours the reality of scenario 1, following the earlier liquidity grab with the price dip to $115,000. Related Reading: XRP Produces Successful $3 Support Retest – But What Next? The Invalidation Risk Regardless of which scenario, KillaXBT has highlighted certain developments that could neutralize the prospects of a bullish reversal. In particular, the analyst explains that failure for the price to hold above the recent wick lows following a retest would force Bitcoin prices to deeper imbalance zones between $112,000 – $113,800. At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $117,900, reflecting a 0.21% gain in the last seven days. Featured image from Pexels, chart from Tradingview

Arthur Hayes has never been shy about big numbers, but his latest essay, Time Signature, frames those targets inside a sweeping macro thesis: a wartime‑style US credit boom that—if it unfolds as he expects—could send Bitcoin and crypto markets into their largest bubble yet. Writing on 22 July, the BitMEX co‑founder argues that financial markets, like dancers, must keep time with the “kick drum” of credit creation. “If we are out of time, we lose money,” he warns, before identifying the beat he believes traders must follow today: US wartime industrial policy, or what he bluntly calls a shift toward economic “fascism.” Hayes centres his argument on the Pentagon’s newly announced deal with MP Materials, under which the US Defense Department will become the miner’s largest shareholder, guarantee a floor price for critical rare‑earth elements at twice China’s current market rate, and back a $1 billion bank loan to build a Nevada processing plant. The structure, he writes, is the template for “QE 4 Poor People,” a credit‑multiplier that expands the money supply without formal Congressional approval. Related Reading: Trump Shares Viral Bitcoin Breakdown — Here’s What He Posted In his schematic example a single commercial‑bank loan to MP Materials “creates $1,000 of new fiat wampum,” then ripples outward as wages, deposits and discounted Treasury borrowing. “The money multiplier is > 1, and this wartime production leads to an increase in economic activity, which is accounted for as ‘growth,’” Hayes observes. The result, he says, is inevitable inflation, yet also “government‑guaranteed profits” for banks and industry. Why Bitcoin And Crypto Is The Bubble Of Choice Hayes’ historical analogy is China’s 1990s–2020s property boom, where a five‑thousand‑percent expansion of M2 forced households into apartments, inflating land values and local‑government coffers. In the United States, he contends, the socially acceptable pressure valve will be digital assets. Two policy shifts underpin that call. First, retirement plans—an $8.7 trillion pool—may now allocate to crypto under a recent executive order. Second, the Trump campaign’s floated proposal to eliminate capital‑gains tax on digital assets could, in Hayes’ words, provide “insane war‑driven credit growth” with “no fucking taxes.” The broader attraction for politicians, he claims, is demographic: younger and more diverse investors own crypto in greater proportions than they own equities, so a bull market would “create a broader, more diverse set of people who are pleased with the ruling party’s economic platform.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Correlation To Altcoins Is Collapsing: A Warning Sign? Even a credit‑fuelled boom must find an audience for the mounting federal deficit. Hayes’ solution is the stablecoin sector, which already places most of its assets under custody in US Treasury bills. On-chain data, he notes, suggest that roughly nine cents of every new dollar in total crypto market value migrates into stablecoins. “Let’s assume that Trump propels the total crypto market cap to $100 trillion by 2028,” he writes; “that would create roughly $9 trillion in T‑bill purchasing power.” The mechanism recalls World War II financing, when the Treasury skewed issuance toward short‑term bills. In Hayes’ view, a self‑reinforcing loop emerges: wartime procurement fuels credit expansion, higher credit lifts crypto, larger crypto capitalization feeds stablecoin demand for T‑bills, and those purchases backstop further deficits. Trading Tactics—And The Year‑End Call Against that macro backdrop Hayes declares his investment vehicle, Maelstrom, “fully invested,” and explains why: “It’s pretty simple: Maelstrom is fully invested. Because we are degens, the shitcoin space offers amazing opportunities to outperform Bitcoin, the crypto reserve asset. […] Ether has been the most hated large-cap crypto. No more; the Western institutional investor class, whose chief cheerleader is Tom Lee, loves Ether. Buy first, ask questions later.” His numerical convictions are explicit: Bitcoin $250,000 and Ether $10,000 by 31 December 2025. The Western credit geyser is, he writes, “about to tear the market a new asshole.” Yet he repeatedly reminds readers that these are personal views, not investment advice. At press time, Bitcoin traded at $118,368. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

A prominent crypto analyst with X username PlanD has backed Bitcoin to maintain its uptrend despite some significant price retracement in the past week. Notably, PlanD states the premier cryptocurrency remains on course for a $340,000 price point but only if a specific support zone remains valid.  Related Reading: Bitcoin Sharpe Ratio Says It’s Time For ‘Cautious Optimism’ — Further Upside Growth Incoming? Bitcoin Bullish Momentum Hinges On $91,000 – $100,000 Support Structure In an X post on May 31, PlanD outlined Bitcoin’s potential to soon re-enter price discovery mode regardless of the recent price dip. Since hitting a new all-time high at $111,970, the flagship cryptocurrency has slipped into a minor corrective phase, forcing market prices to go below $104,000. However, PlanD explains that Bitcoin’s price action has a 3-year giant cup and handle pattern that postulates the digital asset is set for immense price gains in the current bull cycle. The cup-and-handle pattern is a common chart pattern that signals a bullish continuation in price movement. As illustrated in the chart above, the cup is formed Bitcoin’s crash from its previous all-time high at $69,000 in November 2021 followed by a stabilization and recovery period which lasted until March 2024 when Bitcoin returned to the same price level.  This is followed by the handle which is the descending channel as seen from March 2024 to around October 2024 before Bitcoin achieved a decisive price breakout above the neckline of $76,000 in November 2024. Despite registering impressive strides from this price point to around $112,000, PlanD notes that the Cup-and-Handle pattern tips Bitcoin to hit a price target of $340,000 before 2025.  Amidst the ongoing retracement, the analyst states that this bullish structure remains in place as long as Bitcoin remains above the support price zone of $91,000-$100,000. Provided the premier cryptocurrency does not fall below this price level, the ongoing correction is expected to serve as mere pullback in preparation for a major upswing. Related Reading: XRP Price Risks Crash Below $2 As Correction Takes Hold, Here’s Why Bitcoin Price Overview At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at $104,739 following a minor price gain of 0.64% in the past day. Meanwhile, the asset’s daily trading volume is valued at $40.03 billion following a 31.28% increase in the past day.  Despite this slight price increase in the past day, Bitcoin must return to its current all-time high at $111,970 to neutralize any current bearish potential. However, the premier cryptocurrency will face familiar resistances at the $106,000 and $109,000 to achieve this task.  Featured image from Getty Images, chart from Tradingview

In his latest essay, Arthur Hayes, co-founder and CIO of Maelstrom, draws a stark parallel between America’s growing economic imbalances and its unsustainable reliance on foreign capital—and argues that capital controls, not tariffs, are the only politically viable solution to rebalance the system. In what he dubs the “Boiling Frog Theory,” Hayes foresees a slow, stealthy imposition of financial restrictions on foreign investors that will ultimately accelerate Bitcoin’s rise to $1 million by 2028. Titled Fatty Fatty Boom Boom, the essay begins with a provocative metaphor: America’s bloated financial system is likened to the obesity crisis—a pathology enabled by cheap processed inputs and pharmaceutical band-aids that preserve a diseased status quo. “The American economy was hijacked by printed money,” Hayes writes, tracing the origin of US imbalances back to the Federal Reserve’s inception in 1913 and the permanent shift away from natural business cycles to a regime of endless stimulus. Why Capital Control’s Could Drive Bitcoin To $1 Million Tariffs, according to Hayes, are politically and structurally impotent. Even under Trump, their application will be diluted through bilateral carve-outs and geopolitical concessions, allowing countries like Vietnam and Mexico to act as arbitrage hubs. “Without one tariff for all, there will always be a country or countries that act as trans-shipment arbitrage points,” he explains, noting that this same dynamic lets China skirt semiconductor restrictions via third-party intermediaries. Related Reading: Bitcoin Treasury Firms Are This Cycle’s Bubble, Experts Warn Instead, Hayes sees capital controls—specifically taxes on foreign ownership of US financial assets—as the only strategy with both economic bite and political payoff. He proposes a 2% annual tax on foreign-held stocks, bonds, and property, totaling approximately $33 trillion. Such a levy could eliminate federal income taxes for the bottom 90% of Americans, making it a “winning political strategy” for Team Trump. “Either foreign capital stays, pays the tax, and revenue is used to eliminate income taxes… or foreign capital leaves, and American manufacturing grows,” Hayes argues. But if capital leaves, who replaces it? Hayes is blunt: the US will turn to the printing press. “Remember that 4/4 kick drum, the Brrr button. Y’all know what the answer is,” he quips, referring to the return of quantitative easing, the suspension of QT, treasury buybacks, and loosened regulatory constraints like the supplemental leverage ratio. Hayes believes the Fed, despite rhetorical resistance, is already enabling this stealth monetization by targeting long-duration treasury bonds for QE. “Powell’s ass is sat firmly in the cuck chair, and he ain’t leaving. Now pass the lube,” he writes, in typical Hayes fashion. The ultimate effect of this capital exodus and ensuing monetary response, he contends, will be the devaluation of US treasuries in real terms and the reallocation of global capital into stateless, censorship-resistant assets like Bitcoin. Unlike gold, which requires intermediaries to function in the digital realm, Bitcoin is a native digital bearer asset that can operate outside state-controlled financial infrastructure. “Bitcoin is the perfect and only lifeboat for global capital that must leave America and elsewhere,” he asserts. Related Reading: Bitcoin Rally Is Far From Over—Top Expert Predicts Surge To $150,000 Hayes notes that even the Trump administration appears ideologically aligned with Bitcoin and gold, pointing to the removal of tariffs on gold and the regulatory de-escalation around crypto. With these assets potentially being elevated to reserve status, Bitcoin is poised to absorb capital fleeing dollar-denominated instruments. In his forecast, Hayes considers the migration of even 10% of foreign-held US portfolio assets—$3.3 trillion—into Bitcoin. At current market depth, that would trigger a supply shock far beyond a simple 10x price move. “If 10x the amount of capital attempted to squeeze into the market, it would lead to a much greater than a 10x rise in price,” he predicts, citing the inelastic supply and long-term holders unwilling to sell. The result? A path to $1 million per Bitcoin by the 2028 US presidential election. Hayes also reveals that Maelstrom went “maximum long” during the early April financial turmoil and is now rotating into “quality altcoins”, which he believes offer real services and return profits to token holders. Still, he warns of tactical volatility, noting that Trump’s strategy is fluid and opposition within the administration remains. But for Hayes, the trajectory is clear. Capital controls are no longer fringe theory—they are becoming inevitable policy. And Bitcoin, he concludes, is the only asset positioned to benefit from the collapse of Pax Americana’s financial plumbing. At press time, BTC traded at $102,377. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In the latest episode of The Bitcoin Layer, host Nik Bhatia invited on-chain analyst James Check—better known as “Checkmate”—to dissect the forces that have carried bitcoin past six figures and to explain why he believes the market still points toward a move to roughly $150,000. From the outset, Check framed his analysis in sweeping macroeconomic terms. Since the 2008 financial crisis, he said, dollar strength has been “a big up-trend” that rewarded foreign investors who benchmark in other currencies, buy dollars, and place those dollars into US equities. But that era, he argued, is giving way to a “sound-money dominance regime”: “My favorite chart is the S&P 500 priced in gold. You get about ten years where equities trounce gold, then ten years where gold trounces equities. Since 2022 that chart flipped in gold’s favor, and for the first time in history we have a mature, trillion-dollar bitcoin sitting right alongside it. We’re watching the rules shift, and it’s not going to happen overnight—it’ll take a decade, maybe longer, to fully play out.” Why $150,000 Is Next For Bitcoin The conversation quickly moved from macro currents to market structure. After the spring sell-off that drove prices from the mid-$90,000s to the mid-$70,000s—an “air pocket” where little historical supply had transacted—bitcoin clawed back the dense supply cluster around $95,000 with surprising ease. Related Reading: Bitcoin Nears All-Time High as $312M BTC Exit Binance Following US-China Trade Deal “People were willing to just sit tight and allow the market to find its level. They’d bought at $100,000, watched it fall to $75,000, bought some more, and now they’re up on the whole stack. That kind of behavior is a real boost of confidence.” Shortly after that consolidation, the market printed a local high near $105,000. For veteran participants, the psychological shift was palpable. “$100,000 was the target for the last decade,” Check said. “Now it’s the floor. Bitcoin has proved it belongs at a trillion-dollar market cap, flipped silver, and feels perfectly natural sitting among the five largest monetary assets on earth.” Check’s quantitative framework hinges on the market-value-to-realized-value (MVRV) ratio, which benchmarks price against the aggregated on-chain cost basis. Translating historical MVRV extremes into forward levels puts the present cycle’s statistical ceiling near $166,000: “If price goes to $166,000, my objective analyst self has to say, ‘We’re two standard deviations above the mean, and we’ve only stayed higher than this five percent of the time.’” That band—roughly $150,000 to $160,000—marks the altitude where he expects the first serious wave of profit-taking. Yet the level remains plausible precisely because it is rooted in realized behavior, not in the supply-halving calendar: “There’s a reason MVRV only gets so high. When people look at their portfolio and see a house sitting there in green numbers, a chunk of them will hit the sell button. You don’t need everyone to sell—just enough to overwhelm new demand.” Derivatives, “Time Pain” And The Halving A maturing derivatives market is central to Check’s thesis. He expects perpetual-swap funding rates to breach 20 percent annualized on a rapid run toward $150,000, inviting basis traders to short futures and collect the premium. Options desks, meanwhile, can harvest fat volatility premia by selling calls. “Big asset managers must hedge. If they can’t lay off a billion-dollar position in options they won’t take the position in the first place. Derivatives aren’t papering over demand—they’re the plumbing that lets real capital scale into the asset.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Targets $110,000 All-Time High After Consolidation Trend Ends Those instruments also reshape corrections. Where 2017 pullbacks were 40% plunges that reversed in days, today’s market prefers shallower, longer consolidations—episodes that impose what Check calls time pain. “Depth pain is easy to see—your coins are 30% underwater. Time pain is harder. Three months of chop at the same level will wear investors out, and boredom is a powerful seller.” Perhaps one of the most striking element of the interview was Check’s deliberate break from the four-year, halving-centric cycle model. After studying the August–September 2023 pullback, the mid-2024 range, and the latest sell-off, he concluded that the short-term-holder cost basis now functions less as a binary floor or ceiling and more as a mean-reversion anchor. “People are now using bitcoin to respond to the world rather than us responding to bitcoin. Macro sentiment—not scheduled supply shocks—is steering the big flows.” Treasury Adoption And The Confidence Machine When tracking corporate treasuries, ETFs, and other large holders, Check zooms out to a 30-day change in realized cap—the cleanest view of net dollar inflows. Even March-April ETF outflows, he noted, were nearly matched by falling CME open interest, implying “mechanical cash-and-carry unwinds rather than lost conviction.” Closing the conversation, he returned to first principles: “Markets are a big confidence machine. The dollar cycle, the gold-equity rotation, the cost of hedging—all of that feeds straight into bitcoin order books, option smiles, and on-chain ledgers. The only real question is: what’s the fair macro premium for digital sound money?” For James Check, the chart already sketches an answer: somewhere around $150,000, the confidence machine will stage its next major test. At press time, BTC traded at $102,573. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In an interview that spanned everything from macro-economics to meme-coin mania, veteran trader and Asymmetric founder Joe McCann laid out a forceful—but narrowly targeted—thesis: Bitcoin’s institutional flows can propel it to the high six-figure range, Solana is “the fastest horse” toward a mid-three-digit print, and Ethereum’s investment case is increasingly threadbare. Bitcoin To $400,000 McCann began by striking at one of crypto’s longest-lived touchstones. “It’s become clear to anyone who follows crypto that the four-year cycle is effectively dead,” he told host Scott Melker, arguing that traditional patterns of post-halving rotation have been overwhelmed by spot-ETF inflows and by what he calls an unprecedented “headline-driven market.” Those flows, he said, are only beginning. Sovereign wealth funds, pensions, and corporations are “hoarding Bitcoin the way they once hoarded gold,” but unlike bullion, the supply cap is immutable. With uncertainty indices at all-time highs and US trade policy setting the tempo of risk assets, McCann sees a probabilistic path toward enormous upside once “local maxima” on tariffs are understood. Related Reading: Bitcoin 6-Month Flight Plan To $188,000, Here’s The Roadmap “If Trump does deregulation, if he chills out on tariff policy, you could see Bitcoin actually rip two, three, four-hundred thousand dollars. It really is just a number. It’s more about the flows.” Pressed for timing, the CEO of Asymmetric would not anchor to a specific date, but he did outline the mechanics: reflexive price action in a thinly supplied market. Bitcoin, still a “fraction of the market cap of gold,” now trades in an environment where gold’s 40% year-to-date rally has revived the digital-gold narrative. A break of the Bitcoin-gold cross to the upside could lure capital away from bullion “simply because it’s easier to transport and censorship-resistant.” The implication is that a decisive break above the psychological $100,000 could accelerate quickly to the headline figure of $400,000 on ETF demand alone—particularly if the US administration moves ahead with initiatives such asUS President Donald Trump Strategic Bitcoin Reserve buys in a budget neutral way or Senator Cynthia Lummis’s proposal. Bitcoin To $400K, Solana To $420, Ethereum Not Worth Owning | @joemccann 0:00 Intro 2:27 Trump’s Impact on Markets 5:11 Crypto’s Massive Repricing 8:30 Gold vs Bitcoin 13:22 Bitcoin Correlation Debate 16:16 Digital Gold Future 19:06 Trump’s Crypto Influence 23:18 Meme Coins… pic.twitter.com/U52rvt39LL — The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) May 11, 2025 Where Are Solana And Ethereum Heading? If Bitcoin is McCann’s 70% core position, Solana is his high-conviction satellite. He credits the network’s throughput during last month’s Trump-branded meme-coin launch—“the chain did not suffer; it hummed right along”—as a proof-of-scale moment. Wallet abstractions such as Moonshot, and the migration of stable-coin flows from Ethereum, have in his view removed the UX friction that capped the last cycle. “When the most popular person on the planet launches a meme-coin on Solana, what does that tell you? We have infrastructure ready for mass adoption.” Related Reading: Sovereigns Are Buying Billions Of Bitcoin, Says Anthony Scaramucci With spot-Solana ETFs already live in Canada and US filings advancing, he projects that “given the fundamentals coupled with ETF flows… Solana’s got to be at least $420,” a figure he reiterated more than once. By contrast, McCann’s hedge-fund book carries only one structural short: ETH. He offered a blunt rationale: once-innovative technology, but an asset now “being cannibalized by its own L2s.” With gas averaging one cent, fee revenue is insufficient to reward holders, and institutional channels prefer tokens that either accrue protocol cash-flow or sit inside ETF wrappers—criteria he does not see Ethereum satisfying. “The asset is not worth owning,” he concluded. “Anytime Ethereum rips, usually take profits across the board on everything.” McCann doubts the return of the indiscriminate “alt-season” that characterised prior tops. Liquidity, he argued, has bifurcated into Bitcoin ETFs on one end and high-velocity meme-coin venues such as Pump.Fun on the other. Tokens in between must now defend themselves with “real protocol revenue, not just governance.” If they do, he foresees a coming wave of dividend-style crypto ETFs aimed at yield-hungry boomers; if they don’t, “most of them will trade to zero.” At press time, BTC traded at $104,528. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In a live interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday, Peter Chung, Head of Research at quantitative trading firm Presto, reaffirmed his conviction that Bitcoin can reach $210,000 before the end of 2025, arguing that the asset is evolving into a macro-level refuge during moments of stress in the global financial system. Bitcoin Set To Go Parabolic “We have not changed our market outlook,” he began in the opening seconds of the interview. “Bitcoin target price remains $210,000, driven by institutional adoption and the global liquidity expansion.” He emphasized that the same framework underpins Presto’s valuation of Ether, adding: “For ETH our target price was based on the ETH-to-BTC ratio, which was 0.05. We still maintain that as well, reflecting the community’s efforts to address the value-leakage problem.” Related Reading: Bitcoin’s Net Taker Volume Turns Positive, New All-Time High Incoming? Chung pushed back on suggestions that the pullback earlier this year invalidates the model: “Granted, not everything turned out the way we expected so far this year—especially the macro outlook and the market reaction to it—but in hindsight it was actually a healthy correction that has paved the way for the further re-rating of Bitcoin as a mainstream asset.” Within Presto, he said, the dominant task this month has been “trying to figure out whether anything is broken in the market—be it confidence or some kind of global order—and how these assets are positioned in people’s portfolios.” Their conclusion: nothing systemic has fractured, leaving the secular drivers intact. The longest exchange came when the anchors asked why gold surged in April while Bitcoin initially lagged. Chung offered a granular taxonomy of Bitcoin’s behavior: “Bitcoin has two faces: digital gold and a risk-on asset. Most of the time Bitcoin behaves like a risk-on asset […]. But it’s during a crisis that Bitcoin behaves like gold […]. These moments are rare. They happen only when the market has doubts about the stability of the US-dollar-dominated financial system […] and that’s what we saw in the month of April.” Asked to identify the most statistically significant input behind the $210,000 figure, Chung pointed to what he called “global liquidity expansion,” a variable that Presto tracks through the balance-sheet trajectories of major central banks and large sovereign wealth funds. Although money-supply growth has slowed in the United States, it has re-accelerated in China and, more recently, in the euro area—a pattern that Presto believes will leak into crypto markets through cross-border flows. Related Reading: Bitcoin Trades At 40% Discount As ‘Triple Put’ Unfolds: Hedge Fund Founder He also underlined the role of institutional order-flow data, which the firm credits for spotting the 2024 rally. “The proportion of block trades above $10 million in Bitcoin perpetual futures,” he noted off-camera, “is back above 7 percent of total volume for the first time since November 2023.” Why $210,000 Is Not ‘Optimistic’ Although the round number draws headlines, Chung argued that $210,000 is conservative relative to historical adoption curves: “If you map Bitcoin’s network-effect data onto the monetisation path of the internet between 1994 and 2007, you arrive at levels far above $210,000. We chose that figure precisely because it balances tail-risk and liquidity constraints. It is not a moon-shot; it is the median outcome in our distribution.” Still, he conceded that the path is unlikely to be linear: “Our mission is not to be prophets of the exact week or month; our mission is to determine whether anything in the structural thesis—scarcity, decentralisation, adoption—has broken. So far, nothing is broken.” The anchors pressed him on what would force a downward revision. Chung named two red lines: A lasting collapse in real global M2, which would strangle risk capital and suppress the liquidity premium that pushes scarce digital assets higher, and a fatal consensus bug or governance failure inside the Bitcoin network—an event he stressed has “never happened in fifteen years” but that any quantitative risk model must include. Short of those, Presto sees the April correction as a “mid-cycle purge” that flushed overheated leverage ahead of the next leg. “Bitcoin is already trying to catch up,” Chung said, pointing to the rally off the mid-April lows. Whether that momentum propels the asset all the way to six-figure territory by New Year’s Eve will, in his words, “depend on whether investors choose to price geopolitical insurance now or after the next tremor.” At press time, BTC traded at $94,983. Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com

In an interview, Arthur Hayes—co-founder of the pioneering crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX—laid out his outlook for Bitcoin, predicting a momentous rally fueled by what he describes as “stealth printing” by global central banks. While Hayes has long stressed the crucial role of liquidity in driving the Bitcoin price, his latest remarks go even further, suggesting a new phase of expansion is imminent. Bitcoin’s 4-Year Cycle Is History Hayes believes that Bitcoin’s original four-year “halving cycle” framework has been overshadowed by the asset’s ascent into mainstream financial consciousness. According to him, early on, Bitcoin’s market dynamics were more closely tied to mining profitability cycles. However, those days appear largely gone: “Now that Bitcoin and crypto are a bona fide asset class…everyone’s responding to it,” Hayes said. “It has transitioned from this technological digital bearer asset into the best smoke alarm for fiat liquidity that we have globally.” Related Reading: Bitcoin Whales Make Big Moves As Bullish Momentum Resurfaces Rather than focus on halving events, Hayes urges investors to track how many dollars, euros, yen, and yuan are actively being created—or destroyed—by the world’s major central banks. In his view, the Federal Reserve, the People’s Bank of China, the Bank of Japan, and the European Central Bank drive the most significant flows: “All I care about is fiat liquidity. As long as we believe [Bitcoin] works, then it just comes down to how many fiat things are in the denominator, and then you just get to the price.” According to Hayes, markets are underestimating the US Federal Reserve’s willingness to revert to looser monetary policy far sooner than publicly stated. He calls recent Fed moves “stealth printing,” arguing that Chair Jerome Powell is quietly laying groundwork to keep credit conditions easy—even though official language still references inflation concerns. Hayes pointed to signs in the Fed’s communications that quantitative tightening (QT) will slow or even pause. One such indicator is Powell’s mention of offsetting any reduction in mortgage-backed securities with fresh purchases of US Treasuries: “They said they might taper QT to be flat […] That’s very positive for dollar liquidity.” He also noted Powell’s statements that any inflation arising from tariffs would be considered “transitory”—in effect granting the Fed cover to maintain accommodative policies: “Tariffs don’t matter anymore to Powell, and they shouldn’t matter anymore as crypto investors […] because we know that Powell’s going to continue to provide the monetary conditions […] that we need to have our portfolios go up in value in fiat dollar terms.” The Bottom Is (Probably) In In Hayes’s estimation, the worst of Bitcoin’s recent downturn may already be behind us. Although he concedes that the market could still retest lows, he contends that Bitcoin has likely established a key floor: “On balance, we probably hit a bottom of 76,000 […] Does that mean that we’re not going to retest it? No, of course not, but if I had to make a bet, I would bet that we go higher rather than lower.” For Hayes, this is a question of recognizing a turning point in monetary policy. Once the Federal Reserve and other central banks signal they are fully done tightening—“or never truly started,” in his phrasing—he expects Bitcoin to climb. Related Reading: One Of Bitcoin’s Most Reliable Buy Signals Just Flashed Hayes also dismissed the idea that looming crypto regulations in the United States or elsewhere could meaningfully stifle Bitcoin’s trajectory. He believes Bitcoin’s permissionless, decentralized design makes it effectively impervious to traditional regulatory blockades: “Crypto regulation doesn’t matter. Bitcoin doesn’t need anyone’s permission. It’s moving with or without them […] If Bitcoin trades on tradfi regulations, then I don’t want to own it. I want something immune to regulation.” In one of his most attention-grabbing statements, Hayes contemplated whether Bitcoin could achieve “a numerically interesting number”—including the possibility of $1 million—during the next wave of dollar-driven liquidity. Although he did not definitively lock in an exact price ceiling, he mentioned that it might be a psychologically resonant figure: “I put $1 million Bitcoin out there- I hope it will be $1 million dollars but you know maybe it’s just 666,000 or 500,000 or 250,000 what some round number that the human mind sees as significant, for some arbitrary reason.” For Hayes, it comes down to global monetary authorities deciding they have “gone too far” in trying to rein in spending and inflation. Once central banks resume large-scale liquidity injections, he argues, the stage is set for rapid upside in Bitcoin’s price. Arthur Hayes’s perspective centers on the idea that Bitcoin’s fate hinges almost exclusively on global liquidity conditions. He remains convinced that central bankers, especially at the Fed, are closer to providing a renewed wave of monetary stimulus than the market believes—paving the way for a dramatic Bitcoin rally. While volatility remains inherent, Hayes insists that the largest cryptocurrency is poised to move swiftly once the policy backdrop aligns. “If you know what to look for, the clues are everywhere. The bottom is in, liquidity is coming back, and Bitcoin… it’s already turning the corner.” Where that corner leads, according to Hayes, could be as high as $1 million—starting, he suggests, as soon as April. At press time, BTC traded at $85,765. Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com

In a new publication titled The Mustard Seed, Joe Burnett—Director of Market Research at Unchained—outlines a thesis that envisions Bitcoin reaching $10 million per coin by 2035. This inaugural quarterly letter takes the long view, focusing on “time arbitrage” as it surveys where Bitcoin, technology, and human civilization could stand a decade from now. Burnett’s argument revolves around two principal transformations that, he contends, are setting the stage for an unprecedented migration of global capital into Bitcoin: (1) the “Great Flow of Capital” into an asset with absolute scarcity, and (2) the “Acceleration of Deflationary Technology” as AI and robotics reshape entire industries. A Long-Term Perspective On Bitcoin Most economic commentary zooms in on the next earnings report or the immediate price volatility. In contrast, The Mustard Seed announces its mission clearly: “Unlike most financial commentary that fixates on the next quarter or next year, this letter takes the long view—identifying profound shifts before they become consensus.” At the core of Burnett’s outlook is the observation that the global financial system—comprising roughly $900 trillion in total assets—faces ongoing risks of “dilution or devaluation.” Bonds, currencies, equities, gold, and real estate each have expansionary or inflationary components that erode their store-of-value function: Gold ($20 trillion): Mined at approximately 2% annually, increasing supply and slowly diluting its scarcity. Real Estate ($300 trillion): Expands at around 2.4% per year due to new development. Equities ($110 trillion): Company profits are constantly eroded by competition and market saturation, contributing to devaluation risk. Fixed Income & Fiat ($230 trillion): Structurally subject to inflation, which reduces purchasing power over time. Burnett describes this phenomenon as capital “searching for a lower potential energy state,” likening the process to water cascading down a waterfall. In his view, all pre-Bitcoin asset classes were effectively “open bounties” for dilution or devaluation. Wealth managers could distribute capital among real estate, bonds, gold, or stocks, but each category carried a mechanism by which its real value could erode. Related Reading: Is Bitcoin Peak In? This Data Suggests Otherwise, Analytics Firm Says Enter Bitcoin, with its 21-million-coin hard cap. Burnett sees this digital asset as the first monetary instrument incapable of being diluted or devalued from within. Supply is fixed; demand, if it grows, can directly translate into price appreciation. He cites Michael Saylor’s “waterfall analogy”: “Capital naturally seeks the lowest potential energy state—just as water flows downhill. Before bitcoin, wealth had no true escape from dilution or devaluation. Wealth stored in every asset class acted as a market bounty, incentivizing dilution or devaluation.” As soon as Bitcoin became widely recognized, says Burnett, the game changed for capital allocation. Much like discovering an untapped reservoir far below existing water basins, the global wealth supply found a new outlet—one that cannot be augmented or diluted. To illustrate Bitcoin’s unique supply dynamics, The Mustard Seed draws a parallel with the halving cycle. In 2009, miners received 50 BTC per block—akin to Niagara Falls at full force. As of today, the reward dropped to 3.125 BTC, reminiscent of halving the Falls’ flow repeatedly until it is significantly reduced. In 2065, Bitcoin’s newly minted supply will be negligible compared to its total volume, mirroring a waterfall reduced to a trickle. Though Burnett concedes that attempts to quantify Bitcoin’s global adoption rely on uncertain assumptions, he references two models: the Power Law Model which projects $1.8 million per BTC by 2035 and Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin model which suggests $2.1 million per BTC by 2035. He counters that these projections might be “too conservative” because they often assume diminishing returns. In a world of accelerating technological adoption—and a growing realization of Bitcoin’s properties—price targets could overshoot these models significantly. The Acceleration Of Deflationary Technology A second major catalyst for Bitcoin’s upside potential, per The Mustard Seed, is the deflationary wave brought on by AI, automation, and robotics. These innovations rapidly increase productivity, lower costs, and make goods and services more abundant. By 2035, Burnett believes global costs in several key sectors could undergo dramatic reductions. Adidas’ “Speedfactories” cut sneaker production from months to days. The scaling of 3D printing and AI-driven assembly lines could slash manufacturing costs by 10x. 3D-printed homes already go up 50x faster at far lower costs. Advanced supply-chain automation, combined with AI logistics, could make quality housing 10x cheaper. Autonomous ride-hailing can potentially reduce fares by 90% by removing labor costs and improving efficiency. Burnett underscores that, under a fiat system, natural deflation is often “artificially suppressed.” Monetary policies—like persistent inflation and stimulus—inflate prices, masking technology’s real impact on lowering costs. Bitcoin, on the other hand, would let deflation “run its course,” increasing purchasing power for holders as goods become more affordable. In his words: “A person holding 0.1 BTC today (~$10,000) could see its purchasing power increase 100x or more by 2035 as goods and services become exponentially cheaper.” To illustrate how supply growth erodes a store of value over time, Burnett revisits gold’s performance since 1970. Gold’s nominal price from $36 per ounce to roughly $2,900 per ounce in 2025 appears substantial, but that price gain was continuously diluted by the annual 2% increase in gold’s overall supply. Over five decades, the global stock of gold almost tripled. If gold’s supply had been static, its price would have hit $8,618 per ounce by 2025, according to Burnett’s calculations. This supply constraint would have bolstered gold’s scarcity, possibly pushing demand and price even higher than $8,618. Related Reading: Bitcoin Breaches 12-Year Support Line Against Gold – Is The Bull Run Over? Bitcoin, by contrast, incorporates precisely the fixed supply condition that gold never had. Any new demand will not spur additional coin issuance and thus should drive the price upward more directly. Burnett’s forecast for a $10 million Bitcoin by 2035 would imply a total market cap of $200 trillion. While that figure sounds colossal, he points out that it represents only about 11% of global wealth—assuming global wealth continues to expand at a ~7% annual rate. From this vantage point, allocating around 11% of the world’s assets into what The Mustard Seed calls “the best long-term store of value asset” might not be far-fetched. “Every past store of value has perpetually expanded in supply to meet demand. Bitcoin is the first that cannot.” A key piece of the puzzle is the security budget for Bitcoin: miner revenue. By 2035, Bitcoin’s block subsidy will be down to 0.78125 BTC per block. At $10 million per coin, miners could earn $411 billion in aggregate revenue each year. Since miners sell the Bitcoin they earn to cover costs, the market would have to absorb $411 billion of newly mined BTC annually. Burnett draws a parallel with the global wine market, which was valued at $385 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $528 billion by 2030. If a “mundane” sector like wine can sustain that level of consumer demand, an industry securing the world’s leading digital store of value reaching similar scale, he argues, is well within reason. Despite public perception that Bitcoin is becoming mainstream, Burnett highlights an underreported metric: “The number of people worldwide with $100,000 or more in bitcoin is only 400,000… that’s 0.005% of the global population—just 5 in 100,000 people.” Meanwhile, studies might show around 39% of Americans have some level of “direct or indirect” Bitcoin exposure, but this figure includes any fractional ownership—such as holding shares of Bitcoin-related equities or ETFs through mutual funds and pension plans. Real, substantial adoption remains niche. “If Bitcoin is the best long-term savings technology, we would expect anyone with substantial savings to hold a substantial amount of bitcoin. Yet today, virtually no one does.” Burnett emphasizes that the road to $10 million does not require Bitcoin to supplant all money worldwide—only to “absorb a meaningful percentage of global wealth.” The strategy for forward-looking investors, he contends, is simple but non-trivial: ignore short-term noise, focus on the multi-year horizon, and act before global awareness of Bitcoin’s properties becomes universal. “Those who can see past the short-term volatility and focus on the bigger picture will recognize bitcoin as the most asymmetric and overlooked bet in global markets.” In other words, it is about “front-running the capital migration” while Bitcoin’s user base is still comparatively minuscule and the vast majority of traditional wealth remains in legacy assets. At press time, BTC traded at $83,388. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

The Bitcoin price has fallen more than -8.8% since Friday when Bybit suffered the biggest crypto hack in history. The flagship digital asset reached a peak of $99,493 late last week, only to retreat to roughly $91,500 at press time, marking a -5.5% decline since Monday. This downturn not only shatters Bitcoin’s attempt to hold above $95,000 but also places it on the verge of losing its critical 97-day trading range between $91,000 and $102,000. Notably, Bitcoin’s price has broken below the descending trend channel that has been in play since January 20. What’s Next For Bitcoin? Ari Paul, co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of BlockTower Capital, offered a wide-ranging view on Bitcoin’s trajectory and the broader macroeconomic environment. In a post on X, Paul touched on the potential for continued equity-market weakness and its knock-on effect on digital assets: “My market take: equities in for 4-15 months of pain (I’ll guess 9 months) tied to deflationary government policies (tariffs and mass layoffs mostly). Then it’s a political question – does Trump admin ‘capitulate’ and turn severely inflationary? In vast majority of similar cases in history the answer was yes, but just a low confidence guess to me currently.” Related Reading: Is The Bitcoin Price Manipulated? Expert Exposes The Truth Shifting focus to crypto, Paul emphasized that while cryptocurrencies may still display short-term correlations with equities, they are inherently on different cyclical rhythms: “What does that mean for crypto? I continue to think crypto and equities are on different cycles rhythms, but that doesn’t negate shorter term correlation. Alts probably follow equities down at least at first (but they’re already down so much, even versus 2021 prices, they may bottom well before equities.)” Speaking on Bitcoin, Paul predicts that the leading cryptocurrency will “act like a blend of gold and S&P 500,” adding, “if gold remains strong, than that would suggest Bitcoin would outperform losing equities, but maybe not by much. A retrace to ~$73k-$77k seems plausible, I’d probably add there.” Despite the near-term volatility, Paul remains optimistic: “I remain confident crypto bull market not over, but this is looking increasingly different from prior cycles, maybe substantially slower and longer. My base case is that crypto will lead the general macro inflation turn, so maybe crypto bull run resumes in 6 months and equities turn up in 9. The dates given are just indications of my guesstimates. I place no weight on the exact timeframes.” BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes also took to X to warn of an imminent downward push. He pointed to the mechanics of Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and futures market arbitrage as potential drivers of increased selling pressure. “Bitcoin goblin town incoming: Lots of IBIT holders are hedge funds that went long ETF short CME future to earn a yield greater than where they fund, short term US treasuries. If that basis drops as BTC falls, then these funds will sell IBIT and buy back CME futures. These funds are in profit, and given basis is close to UST yields they will unwind during US hours and realise their profit. $70,000 I see you mofo,” he writes. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Consolidates In Tight Zone: Why A Crash To $84,000 Is Likely Notably, research firm 10x Research published an analysis on Monday indicating that while Bitcoin ETFs—led by BlackRock’s IBIT product—have garnered $38.6 billion in net inflows since their January 2024 launch, much of this capital may not represent straightforward bets on rising BTC prices, aligning with Hayes’ statement. “Although Bitcoin ETFs have attracted $38.6 billion in net inflows since their January 2024 launch, our analysis suggests that only $17.5 billion (44%) represents genuine long-only buying. The majority—56%—is likely tied to arbitrage strategies, where short Bitcoin futures positions offset inflows,” the firm noted. Prior to the ongoing price drop, market technician Tony “The Bull” Severino, warned of looming volatility in Bitcoin, noting that the daily Bollinger Bands were hitting extreme tightness—a pattern often followed by a significant price swing: “A decision will be made soon in Bitcoin, as the daily Bollinger Bands reach the third-tightest reading since 2018. In late 2018, record tightness led to a 50% decline in just over a month. In mid 2023, record tightness led to a 200% climb in just over 200 days. Which direction does volatility release?” With Bitcoin teetering just above $91,000 and the market still reeling from Bybit’s historic hack, the market is at a pivotal juncture. Chart signals, macroeconomic uncertainties, and the unwinding of complex trading strategies collectively draw a clouded outlook with a possible extension of this slump to the $73,000–$77,000 range in the coming months. Meanwhile, this does not have to herald the beginning of the bear market. Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder VC, commented via X: “In the middle of 2021:BTC drew down 56%, ETH drew down 61%, SOL drew down 67%, many others 70-80%+. You can come up with all the reasons for why this cycle is different, but the mid-bull reset we’re going through isn’t unprecedented. Those calling for a full blown bear are misguided.” At press time, BTC traded at $90,537. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In a recent client note, Standard Chartered’s Head of Digital Assets Research, Geoff Kendrick, predicted that Bitcoin (BTC) could surge to $500,000 by the end of 2028. The executive attributed BTC’s potential extraordinary price rise to two major factors. Factors Propelling BTC Price While 2024 was a landmark year for the world’s largest cryptocurrency – seeing it reach multiple all-time highs (ATH) and surpass $100,000 for the first time – 2025 has seen more moderate price action. Since January 1, BTC has climbed from around $94,000 to $98,486 as of February 5. Related Reading: Bitcoin Holds Steady Amid NASDAQ Decline, Analyst Calls It ‘Extremely Bullish’ However, Kendrick believes that from the latter half of 2025 through 2028, Bitcoin could enter another parabolic growth phase. He forecasts BTC reaching $200,000 by the end of 2025, $300,000 by the end of 2026, $400,000 by the end of 2027, and ultimately $500,000 by the end of 2028. Kendrick attributes this ambitious price trajectory to two key factors: improved investor access and decreasing volatility. The approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US in January 2024 significantly simplified investor access to BTC. Additionally, as Bitcoin’s price and market capitalization grow, its volatility has been decreasing. A larger market cap makes it more difficult for any single trader or entity to manipulate BTC’s price.  Kendrick expects this trend to continue as ETF markets mature and supporting financial infrastructure within the crypto market strengthens. Kendrick added: The ETFs have attracted a net $39 billion of inflows so far, supporting the theory of pent-up demand being unleashed by increased access. Donald Trump’s January 23 order that the administration evaluate a potential national digital assets stockpile is also important, as this could encourage other central banks to consider Bitcoin investments. If Trump’s administration moves forward with establishing a national digital assets reserve, Bitcoin’s volatility could decline even further. This could attract traditionally risk-averse investors who were previously hesitant due to BTC’s price swings. Bitcoin Price Forecasts Have Bullish Undertones Over the past few days, BTC has faced increased volatility, briefly plummeting to $91,000 amid concerns over US trade tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. However, analysts remain confident in Bitcoin’s long-term bullish outlook. Related Reading: Bitcoin Withstands DeepSeek Dip And FOMC Volatility – How Close Is A New ATH? For instance, seasoned crypto trader Alex Becker recently stated that a $150,000 price target for BTC is too conservative. Likewise, a report by CryptoQuant predicts BTC could reach anywhere between $145,000 and $249,000 under a Trump administration. On-chain data also suggests that Bitcoin ‘whales’ – investors controlling crypto wallets with large BTC holdings – are positioning themselves for a bullish price trajectory, signaling confidence in BTC’s long-term growth under the Trump regime. At press time, BTC trades at $98,486, down 1.3% in the past 24 hours. Featured image from Unsplash, Chart from TradingView.com

DeepSeek, the Chinese open-source AI model making waves in Silicon Valley, is extremely bullish on Bitcoin, predicting a potential peak of between $500,000 and $600,000 by the first quarter of 2026. This bold outlook emerged after the AI was asked to factor in both historical models and on-chain data, alongside a pro-Bitcoin approach from President Trump. DeepSeek’s Bitcoin Price Prediction DeepSeek begins by discussing what it calls the “Key Implications of the Crypto Executive Order,” which it believes would change the calculus for both institutional and retail participants. The AI states that “The exploration of a national Bitcoin reserve signals institutional validation of Bitcoin as a strategic asset. If the US government accumulates Bitcoin, it could create a significant supply shock, driving prices higher.” This comment reflects a view that the market could tighten substantially if large public entities, such as national treasuries, decide to hold Bitcoin in reserve. Furthermore, DeepSeek highlights the possibility that “other nations and institutions could follow suit,” which would add to the upward price pressure if a wave of competitive accumulation were to ensue. Related Reading: Bitcoin Price Reclaims $101,000: Key Levels to Watch Moving Forward The AI also remarks that by banning CBDCs, the Trump administration would be “effectively positioning Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies as the primary alternatives to fiat currencies,” which is a bold departure from the policies adopted or explored by many other jurisdictions that tend to see CBDCs as a means of maintaining control over monetary policy in a digital economy. DeepSeek believes regulatory clarity is another fundamental driver likely to magnify Bitcoin’s gains. It explicitly points out that the “establishment of a cryptocurrency working group led by David Sacks suggests a pro-innovation regulatory approach” and that such a policy stance is likely to foster a favorable climate for crypto businesses and financial institutions looking for stable guidelines. The AI argues that this, in turn, could encourage accelerated institutional inflows and broader mainstream acceptance of Bitcoin, especially if companies are assured that the regulatory framework allows them to innovate without fear of sudden legal or compliance obstacles. DeepSeek goes on to address the geopolitical aspects of the executive order by saying, “The US is taking a leadership role in the digital asset space, which could strengthen the dollar’s dominance while simultaneously boosting Bitcoin’s status as a global store of value.” Delving into the specific timeline, the AI predicts that any news about the realization of thr strategic Bitcoin reserve could trigger a short-lived but potent rally, potentially pushing the price to the $120,000–$130,000 bracket as traders, institutions, and the media absorb the implications of a government-led push for a national Bitcoin reserve and enhanced regulatory clarity. DeepSeek expects that by the second and third quarters of 2025, as conversations around the working group’s findings gain momentum, institutional investors and retail market participants may exhibit what DeepSeek calls “Institutional FOMO,” leading to a jump in Bitcoin’s price to the $200,000–$250,000 zone. Related Reading: DeepSeek’s AI Breakthrough Triggers Fears In Tech Sector, Impacting Bitcoin Prices The AI model then projects that by the end of 2025, the price might rise further, potentially reaching $300,000–$350,000. It points to ongoing speculation about the government’s Bitcoin purchases, or at least the possibility of such purchases, as well as heightened recognition of Bitcoin’s role as a global reserve asset. DeepSeek believes this period would be marked by increased media attention, new financial products enabling Bitcoin exposure, and robust demand from both seasoned and new investors. The AI’s analysis becomes especially dramatic when it turns to the outlook for 2026, tying the bullish price momentum to three key factors: the aftermath of the 2024 Bitcoin halving, growing interest from major institutions, and direct involvement of the US government. DeepSeek says, “Bitcoin could peak at $500,000-$600,000, as the market enters the euphoria phase,” suggesting that the first quarter of 2026 is the most likely time for such a spike. DeepSeek stresses that the halving would reduce Bitcoin’s issuance, while strong new demand from large-scale players—possibly guided by the new executive order—could further tighten supply. Yet, DeepSeek warns that after this euphoric peak, the market may correct significantly, potentially falling back to the $250,000–$300,000 range by mid to late 2026 as investors realize profits and speculative excesses unwind. The AI still anticipates a generally positive long-term picture, asserting that “the long-term outlook remains bullish due to Bitcoin’s growing role in the global financial system,” particularly if the regulatory framework introduced during Trump’s administration remains in place and encourages widespread adoption. At press time, BTC traded at $102,948. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

In a recent appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Tom Lee, Fundstrat Capital CIO and head of research, suggested that Bitcoin may still have a ways to fall before posting a substantial recovery. During the January 13 segment, Lee spoke about the broader market concerns—such as inflation, bond yields, and earnings—before drawing a parallel to the crypto space, specifically Bitcoin’s trajectory. Could Bitcoin Crash Into The $50,000s? “Bitcoin is down roughly 15% from its highs which for a hyper volatile asset is a normal correction and following global liquidity. We are early in the halving cycle,” Lee remarked, underscoring that price swings of this magnitude are common in the digital assets realm. He also elaborated on technical markers indicating future volatility, stating, “One level would be $70,000.” A less likely scenario, but still possible, is a crash into the $50,000s. “It could go as low as the $50,000s. But that’s again not a new level. That’s where it touches before it begins to rally,” Lee remarked. Related Reading: 8 Bitcoin Price Predictions For 2025: What Banks, Hedge Funds And Experts Say Lee’s perspective paints a picture of a two-pronged price movement for Bitcoin: a potential drop to the “$50,000s,” followed by a climb that could reach, in his words, “maybe $200,000 or $250,000.” He noted that despite the possibility of a downward move, long-term holders should not be deterred. “Bitcoin is something you need to be long-term focused on. I don’t think anyone is losing money buying here at $90,000. If they are trying to time this, maybe they get lucky and it goes to $70,000 but to me, Bitcoin could be significantly higher this year, maybe $200,000 or $250,000. So, I think $90,000 is still a great entry point,” the Fundstrat CEO stated. Lee’s remarks came amid a broader discussion on market dynamics. The conversation opened with the recent dip in equities and whether the Federal Reserve’s decision to pause rate cuts might spook investors. Lee pointed to upcoming inflation data as a critical pivot, explaining, “We’ve been correcting now for almost a month… I would like to see CPI come in below 2.5% or so. I think that would give that jolt of confidence to markets on top of earnings.” Related Reading: Could Bitcoin Hit Its Peak In Summer 2025? Analysts Weigh In He went on to highlight what he sees as short-term noise around inflation statistics, which have been muddled by external events such as hurricanes and fires. “The hurricanes last year have muddled some of the inflation quality because for instance, hotel reservations would go up… It will muddle used car prices as well,” Lee said, adding that once these anomalies clear, overall inflation could register lower. In discussing Federal Reserve policy, Lee maintained a balanced stance, saying, “I think the best case is the Fed doing one cut because the economy’s strong enough and they are still dovish… They will make their way to neutral. If they push the cuts to 2026 and 2027, that’s a longer rate to support markets.” He believes the markets remain sensitive to policy uncertainty, particularly under a new administration. When asked whether stocks were overvalued, Lee drew a parallel to bond yields: “To me, the ten-year even if it gets to 5%, is a 20 PE multiple on a ten-year bond… The median PE is 17 times. I think stocks are giving you much better value than a bond right now.” At press time, BTC traded at $95,618. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Bitcoin whales, and increase in speculative appetite and other macroeconomic factors are playing a role in keeping BTC price above $90,000.

Bitcoin's recent price woes near $92,000 are short-term, and one analyst says traders should ignore the market noise.

Bitcoin price sold-off today, but heavy demand below $98,000 is prepping the market for the next leg higher.

In a newly released investor note, one of the oldest US investment banks H.C. Wainwright & Co. —established in 1868—is projecting substantial upswing for the Bitcoin price. According to the note, the institution has revised its previous Bitcoin price target for the end of 2025 from $145,000 to $225,000, underpinned by a confluence of historical trends, macroeconomic indicators, and emerging regulatory and institutional factors. “We estimate BTC will reach a cycle high of $225,000 by YE2025,” stated the firm, referencing both market cycles and the potential for a more supportive digital-asset regulatory landscape in the United States in 2025 under a new administration. Why Bitcoin Could $225,000 By Year End H.C. Wainwright’s analysis highlights several pivotal forces propelling Bitcoin’s growth trajectory. One significant catalyst is the wider availability of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US, a development that could unlock new waves of institutional capital. The firm also cites “accelerating institutional investor and corporate adoption” as a major contributor to its bullish outlook. Related Reading: Bitcoin Coinbase Premium Sinks To Lowest Since FTX Crash: Bottom In? On top of that, the investment bank’s models assume an overall market backdrop that improves in tandem with global liquidity and that any regulatory overhang will abate. H.C. Wainwright is careful to note that the forecast is sensitive to macroeconomic conditions, particularly measured by M2 money supply, which has trended downward since October. Though projecting a lofty six-figure price by 2025, H.C. Wainwright acknowledged that Bitcoin’s path toward $225,000 is unlikely to be a smooth ride. In the report, the bank cautioned: “~20-30% drawdowns during bull markets are not uncommon […] We estimate BTC could retrace back down to the mid-$70,000 range in early 1Q25 before resuming its uptrend.” They attribute these possible pullbacks to Bitcoin’s historical volatility and its correlation with global liquidity trends. Related Reading: 2025 Bitcoin Predictions: Top Fund Manager Shares His Outlook If Bitcoin reaches $225,000 per coin, H.C. Wainwright projects a total Bitcoin market capitalization of approximately $4.5 trillion—around 25% of gold’s current $18 trillion market cap. This scenario translates to a 113% increase over current levels. However, the note adds a striking scenario that is not yet factored into its core forecast: “Our new 2025 price target does not factor in the potential for the US government to officially adopt BTC as a treasury reserve asset at the federal level next year. If implemented, we believe it is plausible that BTC could significantly exceed our base case price target.” The institution’s analysis also extends to the broader crypto market. Historically, Bitcoin’s dominance (its share of total crypto market cap) tends to fall during market peaks, and it dipped into the low 40% range near the last bull cycle peak in November 2021. Looking forward, H.C. Wainwright expects Bitcoin’s dominance to decline to 45% by the end of 2025, down from around 56% currently. Under that assumption, the firm sees the total crypto market swelling from $3.6 trillion today to approximately $10 trillion by year’s end 2025. H.C. Wainwright’s coverage universe of publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies stands to benefit from the anticipated price surge. “If our predictions are correct, there is the potential for significant upward estimate revisions for our coverage universe over the course of next year.” At press time, BTC traded at $96,221. Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Bitcoin has continued to see declining performance in recent days with on-chain metrics offering valuable insights into market behavior. Among these metrics, the Spent Output Profit Ratio (SOPR) for long-term holders has particularly emerged as a critical tool for assessing investor sentiment and market resilience. Long-term holders, defined as investors holding Bitcoin for over 155 days, are often viewed as a stabilizing force in the market. Their selling patterns can significantly influence price trends, making SOPR an indicator worth watching. Related Reading: Bitcoin Market Leverage and Coinbase Premium: What Recent Data Reveals Long-Term Holder Trends And Market Sentiment Recent analysis from a CryptoQuant analyst known as Cryptoavails highlights that Bitcoin’s long-term holder SOPR metric continues to exhibit notable patterns as Bitcoin’s price trends upward. Historically, SOPR values above 1 indicate that long-term holders are selling at a profit, while values below 1 suggest they are offloading their holdings at a loss. This behavior reflects broader market confidence or capitulation during periods of price decline. Currently, the SOPR metric remains consistently above 1, signaling that long-term holders are selling profitably without adding significant downward pressure on Bitcoin’s price. The analysis from Cryptoavails tracks key phases in the Bitcoin market over the past two years, highlighting significant shifts in SOPR values. For instance, in early 2022, the SOPR metric showed high volatility with frequent spikes, suggesting intense profit-taking activity by long-term holders. Amid these sales, Bitcoin’s price experienced a downward trend, reflecting persistent selling pressure during that period. This trend gradually shifted in late 2022 and early 2023 when the SOPR metric mostly remained below 1, indicating that long-term holders were selling at a loss as the market sought to find stability. By mid-2023, the SOPR began trending upwards, signaling renewed confidence among long-term investors. The metric consistently moved closer to or above the critical level of 1, suggesting that long-term holders were once again selling at a profit while market confidence began to recover. This upward trend has remained intact into 2024, supported by Bitcoin’s rising price levels. Importantly, there have been no significant sell-offs by long-term holders, reinforcing the broader market’s stability, according to the crypto analyst. SOPR As A Forward Indicator For Market Growth Overall, Cryptoavails mentioned that the current state of Bitcoin’s SOPR suggests a healthy market dynamic, with long-term holders contributing to a stable price structure. Despite periodic corrections, the sustained presence of SOPR above 1 indicates that selling pressure remains controlled. Related Reading: What’s The Worst Case Scenario For Bitcoin Right Now? Analyst Explains The analyst also pointed out that this behavior reflects market maturity, where long-term investors are not rushing to offload their holdings despite Bitcoin’s price appreciation. Regardless, Bitcoin has continued to consistently decrease in price since its sharp drop below $100,000 last week. At the time of writing, Bitcoin trades at a price of $93,991 down by 1.6% in the past 24 hours. Featured image created with DALL-E, Chart from TradingView

Bitcoin traders’ realized losses have likely peaked, possibly marking the bottom of the current BTC price sell-off.