An analyst warns of a drastic decline in Bitcoin to $10,000. But other experts consider the forecast to be exaggerated and point to stable demand.
• Analyst sees Bitcoin at $10,000
• Macro risks as a central driver
• Experts clearly disagree
The financial world is looking at Mike McGlone’s latest forecasts with a mixture of skepticism and concern. Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior strategist has reinforced his bearish stance on the crypto market in an in-depth conversation with crypto expert EllioTrades.
Advertising
Over 650+ cryptos and 3,000 digital assets
Bitpanda is the BaFin-licensed crypto broker from Austria and the official crypto partner of FC Bayern Munich. Create your account in just a few clicks and benefit from 0% deposit and withdrawal fees.
The entire crypto asset class “dead”?
As the broader market hopes for a return to rally mode, McGlone paints a picture of a historic shakeout that could take Bitcoin prices into regions that many thought had already been overcome. The expert foresees a fundamental reassessment of the entire asset class and even describes the crypto industry in its current form as “dead” because it is hardly investable for institutional risk managers due to five years of underperformance compared to the S&P 500 and an unlimited token supply.
The return to the historical mean
A central pillar of McGlone’s argument is the return to the so-called mean. He defines the $10,000 mark as the price level at which Bitcoin was most frequently traded between 2019 and 2020. This range represents the asset’s natural base, similar to how crude oil has fluctuated around $57 per barrel for almost a decade. According to McGlone, it is now time to remove a zero from the former highs: “That’s where Bitcoin has found its place,” he explained in the interview.
Bitcoin in the wake of the deflationary shakeout
McGlone warns against viewing Bitcoin as a detached alternative asset. Instead, he sees the cryptocurrency caught in a macroeconomic trap characterized by deflationary pressures and a general correction in overheated risk assets. He predicts that an impending correction in the stock market of around 20 percent will trigger the final downward impulse for Bitcoin. In this scenario, Bitcoin would play out its role as a speculative vehicle and lose massive value along with other risk-on assets.
Massive criticism of altcoins too
McGlone also doesn’t shy away from cryptocurrencies in the second row behind the veteran Bitcoin and is particularly skeptical about the broad altcoin market. In his eyes, stablecoins are among the few structurally sound winners because, unlike many other digital assets, they are backed by real values - usually the US dollar and government bond-based reserves. Many other tokens, on the other hand, were based primarily on trust and speculative expectations.
As an indication of this development, McGlone points to the significant growth of Tether and the overall increasing supply of so-called crypto dollars. For him, this is less a sign of healthy market dynamics and more an expression of increased demand for dollars within the crypto sector.
Skepticism among colleagues and market reactions
The reaction to this “$10,000 forecast” has been critical in the financial world. While McGlone points to his hit rate in the past, many industry experts believe his current assessment is exaggerated.
Among the skeptics of McGlone’s bearish forecast is Bitget chief analyst Ryan Lee, who believes it is extremely unlikely that the Bitcoin price will fall to $10,000 in the foreseeable future. He emphasized to the Economic Times: “A Bitcoin crash to $10,000 would likely require an unprecedented disruption of the entire ecosystem, rather than just usual liquidity events. After several deleveraging cycles in recent years, the structure of the industry is significantly more stable. While forecasts of extreme price declines can serve as useful stress tests for risk management, they should not distract investors from Bitcoin’s improving performance.”
In Lee’s assessment, the current environment shows the opposite: Spot Bitcoin ETFs are seeing continued capital inflows, even in phases of international uncertainty. He sees this as an indication that institutional investors are increasingly seeing Bitcoin as a permanent hedging option instead of just viewing it as a short-term speculative object.
Mati Greenspan is also skeptical about the Bloomberg expert’s analysis: “Analysts often get lost in short-term macroeconomic noise and sometimes draw absurd conclusions from it,” Coindesk quoted the founder and CEO of Quantum Economics as saying. “To get back to the $10,000 mark for an asset like Bitcoin, whose daily trading volume on global markets regularly ranges from tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, we would need a global liquidity crisis, a nuclear war and an internet blackout.”
It remains to be seen which expert will ultimately be right.
Claudia Stephan, editorial team at finanzen.net
