Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone has revived one of his most bearish Bitcoin calls, arguing the asset's entire multiyear rally amounts to a "Faustian bargain" that could unwind toward $10,000. The warning lands at an awkward moment for Bitcoin bulls: US equities are notching record highs while Bitcoin, trading around $63,000, has failed to reclaim the psychologically important $69,000 level, a divergence McGlone reads as evidence that "the speculative bubble is deflating."
McGlone's framing treats Bitcoin's ascent since 2021 as a series of borrowed tailwinds rather than organic demand. He points to the 2021 global liquidity injection that first pushed prices to new peaks, the early-2024 launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs that gave the market a fresh round of institutional support, and the late-2024 wave of regulatory optimism and political concessions that carried Bitcoin above $100,000 for the first time. In his view, each of those catalysts has now faded — ETF inflows have dried up and the regulatory tailwind has lost momentum — leaving the asset without an obvious next source of support.
A Chart Tied to Tech Stocks
The technical backbone of McGlone's call rests on a comparison between Bitcoin's trajectory and the ratio of the Nasdaq-100 to the S&P 500 — a proxy for how much of the market's gains have concentrated in a handful of large tech names. Bitcoin's current price sits well below its highs even as that ratio and broader equity indexes push to records, and McGlone argues financial cycles like this one tend to revert to their mean. Applying that logic to Bitcoin points back toward its 2019-2020 fundamental base, which he pegs near $10,000 — the level Bitcoin traded at before the era of aggressive global stimulus began reshaping asset prices.
Related: Bitcoin's Coinbase Premium Hits Record 90-Day Negative Streak
Oversupply Adds to the Pressure
McGlone also flags a structural headwind that's specific to crypto rather than macro: the sheer number of competing tokens now in circulation. With millions of alternative coins available across exchanges, he argues Bitcoin faces oversupply pressure within its own asset class, diluting demand that might otherwise concentrate in BTC alone. That's a notably different critique from the “Bitcoin has a fixed supply” argument bulls typically lean on, since it targets the broader crypto market's expansion rather than Bitcoin's own issuance schedule.
A History of Contrarian Calls
McGlone's bearish streak on Bitcoin isn't new — he's floated downside targets ranging from $50,000 to $28,000 over the past several years, drawing criticism from analysts who've called his projections alarmist given Bitcoin's post-halving cycle dynamics and growing institutional adoption. His track record includes calls that proved prescient alongside others that didn't pan out, and his $10,000 target runs directly counter to the more common institutional narrative that ETF adoption has structurally changed Bitcoin's demand base. Whether this latest warning fares any better than his past ones will depend largely on whether the ETF inflows he says have dried up ever pick back up. Other skeptics have raised similar doubts about Bitcoin's fundamentals relative to older stores of value.
