Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone said bitcoin could still fall back toward and potentially below the $10,000 area, arguing that crypto remains trapped in a broader macro unwind tied to deflationary pressure, overstretched risk assets and what he described as excess across the digital-asset complex.
The Thesis For $10,000 BitcoinMcGlone’s core argument was that bitcoin is no longer trading as a detached alternative asset. In his telling, it has been absorbed into the same cross-asset risk regime as equities, commodities and broader liquidity conditions. “Bitcoin was one in 2009 and now there’s 37 million cryptocurrencies,” he said. “Bitcoin was one. So limited supply. But this space led the way up in risk assets… Now they’re leading the way lower.”
He tied that view to what he sees as a post-inflation deflationary phase, with bond markets, not crypto, likely to be the next relative winners. McGlone said the sharp move in energy, metals and crypto volatility has not yet fully spilled into equities, but expects that to change. His base case is that stock-market volatility rises materially from still-subdued levels, triggering a deeper correction in both equities and digital assets.
EllioTrades pushed back on both the magnitude of the bitcoin call and the idea that crypto is effectively “dead,” arguing that Bitcoin could still reassert itself as a debasement hedge and that stablecoin-based agentic commerce, privacy use cases and a post-washout class of surviving projects could support a future recovery. He also argued that, while many tokens may still go to zero, the surviving tokens of the market may follow a familiar purge-and-rebirth pattern seen in earlier cycles.
McGlone did not rule out that crypto eventually finds a bottom. But his message was that the market is not there yet. For now, he said, bitcoin and the wider complex are still behaving like risk assets in a bear phase and until equities correct more meaningfully and stay down for a while, rallies should be treated with caution rather than as proof that the cycle has turned.
At press time, Bitcoin traded at $69,890.
