Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Commodity Strategist Mike McGlone said bitcoin could still bounce back and fall below the $10,000 zone, saying the crypto is still stuck in a broad lull associated with inflationary pressures, excess risk assets and what he described as an overhang across the digital asset class.
Speaking in an interview with EllioTrades, McGlone repeated the call he made the first time bitcoin topped $100,000: that the market could once again “cross zero.” In this case, he presented the thesis less as a pure prediction of the crypto cycle and more as a big idea of what happens when the virtual assets start to roll together.
Thesis For $10,000 Bitcoin
McGlone’s main argument was that bitcoin no longer trades as a separate, decentralized asset. According to him, it has entered into the same system of risk of various assets such as stocks, property and broad insolvency situations. “Bitcoin was one in 2009 and now there are 37 million cryptocurrencies,” he said. “Bitcoin was one. It’s a limited supply. But this space has led to the rise of risk assets… Now they’re leading the way down.”
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He tied that view to what he sees as a post-inflation phase of deflation, with bond markets, not crypto, likely to be the next winners. McGlone said the sharp movements in energy, metals and crypto volatility have not yet fully spilled over into stocks, but he expects that to change. His basic case is that stock market volatility is rising materially from current levels, causing deep corrections in both equities and digital assets.
That, in turn, supports his bitcoin mission. McGlone said he does not identify $10,000 as an accurate cycle low as the most important long-term trading point in commodity history from 2019-2020. “If you look at the highest price that has been traded in Bitcoin since 2020, maybe even out of 2019, it’s 10,000 or less and it has a history of fluctuations around 10,000,” he said. “So my opinion is that we are going back to that level.”
The strategist was not particularly specific about the entire sector. He asserted that stablecoins are the only clear structural winners within crypto because they “track something physical,” which is the dollar and Treasury-based collateral. He suggested that everything else depends largely on speculative belief. He pointed to the massive growth of Tether and the wide supply of crypto-dollars as evidence that the basic layer of the ecosystem is increasing the demand for the dollar, not appreciation for the volatile tokens.
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McGlone also said that the projected highs of 2024 and 2025, fueled by memecoins, ETFs and the post-election fervor surrounding Donald Trump, may mark a high for the broader asset class. “The important thing is that these dangerous goods must show me that I am not the truth,” he said. Other than that, I see us circling and riding a bear market in stocks, a volatile bull market that hasn’t even started yet.
EllioTrades has pushed back on both the magnitude of the bitcoin call and the idea that crypto is effectively “dead”, arguing that Bitcoin can still reassert itself as a hedge against the collapse and that stablecoin-based commerce, privacy use cases and the post-washout class of surviving projects can support future recovery. He also asserted that, while many tokens may still go to zero, the tokens still in the market may follow the usual pattern of purging and rebirth seen in previous cycles.
McGlone did not rule out that crypto has finally found a bottom. But his message was that the market is not yet there. For now, he said, bitcoin and the broader complex still behave as a dangerous asset in the bear phase and until the balance is rationally adjusted and temporarily settled, the rallies should be treated with caution rather than as evidence that the cycle has turned.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $69,890.
The featured image was created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
