Mike McGlone Reiterates His $10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) Target if US Stocks Fall 20%

McGlone Revisits His $10,000 Scenario

Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone has pushed a $10,000 figure back to the center of the Bitcoin (BTC) price debate, setting out the case in a post on X on Friday that the asset could slide toward that level if United States equities correct by 20%. The post previews a Bloomberg Intelligence report whose title frames a $10,000 correction path as the first domino in a wider chain. His reasoning stacks three markers: the 2025 break above $100,000, gold clearing $5,000 in the first quarter, and most central banks turning cautious while government bond yields climb, a combination he writes may mean the endgame is near. Each leg, in his framing, points one way: the liquidity that once lifted everything is thinning. "I think Bitcoin (BTC) is heading toward a support level around $10,000, particularly if there is a 20% correction in US equities," McGlone wrote, a level that would rank among the deepest bear market drawdowns on record for the asset. Hours later he posted a companion chart showing the 50-week moving average sloping downward in a pattern he likens to 2022 and 2023, the stretch that carried the market through its last prolonged downturn. A third entry in the series argues that a five-year Treasury yield approaching 5% is "too strong" competition for assets that pay no yield, Bitcoin and gold included, since a yield near that level can pull capital toward interest-bearing instruments. The scenario is not new for the wider Bitcoin market. In April, McGlone told podcast listeners "I see a hurricane coming" and said Bitcoin (BTC) could reach $10,000 this year, while adding that a hold above $75,000 would prove him wrong. When on-chain analyst Willy Woo challenged the thesis on Friday, McGlone offered a short reply: check back in a year.

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Ki Young Ju Answers With $30,000

Cryptoquant chief executive Ki Young Ju did not let the call stand unchallenged for long. Replying directly to McGlone within hours, he points to $58 billion that exchange-traded funds have already absorbed in inflows and to 1.3 million BTC held by a consortium of crypto whales, supply he treats as unlikely to move. If none of that money exits, his on-chain cost-basis calculation places the bottom near $30,000, more than three times McGlone's figure. The second leg of his argument runs through MVRV, the ratio of market value to realized value, which compares the current price with the average price at which each coin last moved on-chain; below 1, the average holder is underwater. A $10,000 Bitcoin (BTC) would imply MVRV of 0.2, he calculates, against a worst-ever bottom reading of 0.6 for the asset. Getting there would require the 2019 buyer cohort to capitulate, a group that has already chosen to HODL through two 75% drawdowns. Ju also flagged what he describes as a charting error in McGlone's work: the plot divides the Bitcoin price by 10, so an axis label reading 10,000 in fact represents $100,000. He adds that McGlone has been forecasting a return to $10,000 since 2023 and restated the call in June and again in August of this year. A third position came from Jurrien Timmer, Fidelity's director of global macro, who suggested a new four-year bull cycle may have started under his power-law model, narrative or not; bull markets, he notes, rarely begin with one. His chart, built on data through October 11, puts power-law support at $56,488 and the prior weekly-cycle peak at $122,765, with Bitcoin trading at $82,976 when the data was cut, roughly 47% above that line. Our recent coverage of a MVRV momentum flip and of analysts split over breakout levels near $82,000 sits squarely inside this range of views.

The 20% Trigger Has Not Arrived

The dispute turns less on whose number is right than on what each model was asked. McGlone's $10,000 is conditional output, and the condition has not started: the Nasdaq 100 closed down 2.5% on Friday and sits 6.5% below its October 6 high, leaving roughly fourteen percentage points before his trigger. Prediction markets price a return to the $100,000 range at 27%. Ju's $30,000 answer, computed from on-chain cost basis, addresses a different question, where the floor sits if current holders stay put. Which line gives way first, the 50-week average or the $56,488 power-law support, is what our Bitcoin technical analysis page and cycle tools like the Bitcoin Rainbow Chart are built to follow. McGlone's posts state his condition in his own words; the rest of the report's framing is not on the record, and a model's answer follows the question it is handed more closely than the answer alone reveals.