Tom Lee Predicts Bitcoin (BTC) Can Double Toward $150,000

Fundstrat's Contrarian September Call

Fundstrat's Tom Lee is now treating September's crash anxiety as a contrarian signal, arguing that a market this heavily braced for weakness is more likely to rally than break — and carrying Bitcoin (BTC) toward $150,000 in the process. The strategist has not withdrawn his correction forecast; he has shifted its timing, framing the Federal Reserve's September 15 meeting as the session that decides direction for both equities and crypto. The bearish case he is betting against has real evidence behind it. Across ten US midterm election years since 1986, the average stock market low landed on September 2, and those troughs followed an average slide of 16.77% from the prior high. This year adds a hawkish twist to the seasonal pattern: three Fed presidents voted for a rate hike in July rather than a cut, and Chair Kevin Warsh used his first Jackson Hole speech to put inflation back at the top of the agenda, with six-month PCE inflation running at 4.1%. Fixed-income pricing tells the same story. The 30-year Treasury yield has held above 5%, sitting well clear of the effective fed funds rate near 3.63% — a divergence that presses directly on risk assets, as the side-by-side chart of US Treasury yields and Bitcoin's price makes visible. Against that backdrop, Lee's stance amounts to a bet on a crowded trade unwinding. “I'm actually now thinking because of all this mounting concern, the market might surprise us to the upside,” he said in a recent televised interview, adding that consensus has leaned too far in one direction. His base case is that policymakers neither hike nor cut. “If the Fed doesn't cut, doesn't hike, which is our base case, I think actually the markets could rally very strongly,” he said. Should the pullback extend into October, he expects the S&P 500 correction to start above 8,000 and bottom near 7,300.

Four Catalysts Behind the $150,000 Call

Bitcoin itself is trading near $78,875, up just 0.3% over the past 24 hours and roughly 37% below the all-time high it set in October 2025 — price action consistent with the defensive positioning Lee describes. As we noted when Bitcoin held $79K through a heavy macro week, the market has absorbed hawkish repricing without breaking structure. Lee characterizes the past year as a shallow crypto winter caused by forced selling rather than broken fundamentals, and argues that very few investors still hold digital assets — a thin supply setup that rewards anyone running a HODL strategy through the drawdown. He counts four catalysts for the upside case. Crypto led all macro assets in the third quarter. The four-year halving cycle that has framed Bitcoin's boom-and-bust rhythm ends next month. Korean traders are rotating capital back from AI equities into crypto. And the CLARITY Act, the US market structure bill that determines which regulator oversees digital assets, could still pass this year — a milestone we examined ahead of its 60-vote Senate test on Sept. 15. Rising institutional flows into spot Bitcoin ETF products reinforce his view that larger buyers are positioning for a strong fourth quarter, an accumulation pattern our desk has tracked alongside corporate treasuries — Strategy's 4,603 BTC purchase being the most recent example. Lee still treats $150,000 as achievable for Bitcoin, alongside an S&P 500 above 8,200. For BTC, that represents a gain of roughly 1.9x from current levels, and both targets rest on earnings estimates that continue to climb. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

September 15 as the Trigger

In our reading, Lee's thesis compresses into one scheduled event: the September 15 Fed decision, with fresh jobs and inflation prints landing beforehand. His framing is explicit — weak readings on both would stop traders pricing a hike at all, collapsing the main bearish pillar for risk assets. With BTC some 37% below its record and sentiment defensive, the asymmetry favors a repricing higher if the Fed holds, though the Bitcoin Rainbow Chart still places spot prices in the lower half of the historical band. Broader context sits in our Bitcoin market coverage and the Bitcoin (BTC) primer for newer readers.