Michaël van de Poppe Maps Bitcoin (BTC) to $1 Million on Five-Bottom Trendline

Five Bottoms on One Straight Line

Analyst Michaël van de Poppe has laid out a long-cycle projection in which Bitcoin (BTC) reaches $1 million during the current market cycle, and he grounds the call in the late-1990s dot-com boom. In a post dated October 17, the trader shared a chart from Rand Group in which five prior Bitcoin crash bottoms line up along a single straight line. Read off that line, the model places a conservative bear case near $197,000 by 2030, which means even the framework’s weakest scenario sits far above where the market trades now.

@CryptoMichNL · X post

Shared a chart from Rand Group.

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The Bitcoin (BTC) price sits near $81,000 in mid-October 2026, a level worth a market cap of roughly $1.63 trillion and about 36% below the all-time high of $126,080 reached on October 6, 2025. His reasoning leans on precedent. The dot-com era produced explosive gains in technology shares before a severe drawdown, yet the infrastructure underneath kept expanding through the bust. On his reading of the chart, Bitcoin (BTC) could trace a similar arc: a parabolic overshoot first, a deep correction after. The projection runs on a horizon measured in cycles rather than months, the sort of timeline traders usually anchor to the Bitcoin halving clock.

Near-term performance has been muted, with modest gains or sideways action over the past month in some readings, while longer-term returns from earlier levels remain positive. That gap between the two timeframes is the central tension in the debate, and it is the tension his $1 million figure is meant to resolve. Traders across the broader Bitcoin market have taken notice, even though the asset still trades well below its prior peak.

A Chorus of Seven-Figure Calls

The seven-figure camp is not a one-man call. Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan makes the same argument in his own post, contending that Bitcoin reaches $1 million by capturing a larger slice of the store-of-value market, a pool of capital still dominated by gold and government bonds. Galaxy Digital chief executive Mike Novogratz has floated a similar destination on one condition: younger investors and institutions rotating out of gold, a shift he sizes at roughly 10x from recent levels. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, whose recent warnings have covered 6.9 million Bitcoin (BTC) exposed to future quantum attacks, have both placed $1 million within reach this decade as well.

@Matt_Hougan · X post

Makes the same argument in his own post.

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Much of that thesis leans on the same demand pocket that drives national strategic Bitcoin reserve discussions, the treatment of the asset as a sovereign-grade store of value rather than a trade. It also has a liquidity dimension: our earlier coverage noted that Bitcoin (BTC) trails a record $125 trillion in global M2, the money-supply pool a share-shift thesis would draw from. Anyone who chose to HODL through earlier drawdowns sits on positive long-term returns from prior levels, which is the holder base both bullish frameworks address.

The sharpest dissent comes from Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone, who has warned that Bitcoin (BTC) could instead fall to $10,000, a call that runs against every projection above and reads as more than routine FUD in crypto markets. Critics of the bullish side add that forecasts built on repeating historical patterns may simply not hold, and that parabolic advances have historically preceded severe corrections. The distance between $10,000 and $1 million is as wide as price targets get, and it measures how unsettled the long-term debate still is.

The $197,000 Line That Settles It

The spread between these forecasts is itself the finding. Our reading is that both camps describe the same chart at different horizons: van de Poppe’s own framework contains its bear case, near $197,000 by 2030, and even that floor implies roughly 143% upside from the current $81,000. The projection stands or falls on its trendline. It is built on five prior crash bottoms holding, so a decisive move below the line Rand Group drew would falsify the $1 million path long before the target date arrives. Nearer-term structure is a separate exercise: our Bitcoin technical analysis follows the shorter-timeframe levels, while this debate runs on a multi-year clock. For a visual read of where the cycle sits against past ones, our guide to the Bitcoin Rainbow Chart works through the same long-horizon question.