Bloomberg Analyst Doubles Down on $10K Bitcoin Call

Mike McGlone, Bloomberg Intelligence's senior commodity strategist, is sticking with his call that bitcoin could fall below $10,000 — and the crypto market's response has been a collective eye-roll. The Bloomberg analyst, who made the prediction once before and is now doubling down in a fresh interview with EllioTrades, argues the bear market isn't done. Most of his peers disagree. Loudly.

McGlone Says Sell Rallies — Peers Say He's Lost the Plot

The thesis is straightforward, if grim. Mike McGlone believes bitcoin has become structurally tethered to broader speculative risk assets — equity sentiment, credit conditions, the whole thing — as institutional money poured in over the past few years. That correlation, he argues, is now bitcoin's weakness, not its strength. When the macro unwind happens, bitcoin goes with it.

His case rests on three legs: deflationary macro pressures, what he calls excess speculative supply across crypto markets, and an unfinished correction in traditional risk assets. In the EllioTrades interview, he put it bluntly: 'It's a bear market. Sell rallies.' He also suggested the market needs to 'purge some of these excesses' before any durable bottom can form — a process he expects to drag on.

I think it's going to last a while, and I don't think it's going to end until we purge some of these excesses.

Could Bitcoin Actually Drop to $10,000?

Short answer: yes, technically. Likely? Almost every analyst who was asked said no — and several were not polite about it. The bitcoin bear market scenario McGlone describes would require a shock so severe it strains credibility.

Mati Greenspan, founder and CEO of Quantum Economics, put the most memorable frame on it. 'Analysts often get lost in short-term macro noise, and sometimes they extrapolate that into silly conclusions,' he said. 'For an asset like bitcoin, which regularly sees tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in daily trading volume across global markets, to revisit $10,000 we'd need a global liquidity crisis, a nuclear war, and the internet to stop working.' Hard to argue with the internal logic there.

Jason Fernandes, co-founder and market analyst at AdLunam, was measured but still skeptical. He said a move toward $28,000 — not $10,000 — would already require meaningful contraction in global liquidity, widening credit spreads, or a broader financial stress event. Shaving another 65% off that to reach McGlone's target isn't a macro call anymore. It's apocalypse betting.

For bitcoin to revisit $10,000 we'd need a global liquidity crisis, a nuclear war, and the internet to stop working.

Where Analysts Actually See Bitcoin Going

Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT, acknowledged bear market risk without buying into the $10,000 headline. 'There will always be analysts calling for extreme price targets during a bear market,' he said. 'Can we go down to $10,000? Yes, it's possible, but I see it as highly unlikely.' His near-term read is a range-bound market between $60,000 and $70,000, with a possible rally toward $80,000 that fizzles if macro headwinds persist. The deeper support zone, if things deteriorate, sits at $30,000–$40,000 in his view.

Greenspan's read was more constructive. He pointed out that Bitcoin already cleared its major bear-market structure in 2022 and that current price action — roughly a 50% retracement from the all-time high — is historically normal for BTC cycles. 'Trying to pick an exact bottom is a fool's errand,' he said. 'We're currently looking at roughly a 50% retracement from the all-time high, which is not unusual for bitcoin.' He added it's 'quite possible we've already seen the bottom.'

At time of writing, bitcoin was hovering near $70,000, oscillating between $69,000 and $71,000. ETH, SOL, and XRP all moved higher in tandem — partly on the back of oil reversing a sharp intraday gain, falling $3 per barrel in minutes. That kind of correlation with oil isn't exactly McGlone's fault. It does make his macro-correlated-asset narrative a bit harder to dismiss.

Why the $10,000 Call Keeps Getting Airtime

Call it the bear market media cycle. Extreme targets get clicks. McGlone's prediction isn't new — he made it before and is now refreshing it — and each time it surfaces, it generates a predictable round of rebuttals from analysts who are closer to the market. That's not nothing. The rebuttal consensus is actually meaningful data: when experienced crypto analysts across multiple firms independently describe a prediction as requiring civilizational collapse, the market is probably telling you something.

McGlone isn't wrong that bitcoin trades more like a risk asset than it did in 2018. That correlation is real. But the distance from 'correlated risk asset' to '$10,000 in the current cycle' is enormous — and none of the analysts who pushed back filled that gap with anything other than skepticism. The macro unwind McGlone fears might happen. It just probably won't drag bitcoin down 85% from here to do it.