Bloomberg Intelligence senior macro strategist Mike McGlone revised his Bitcoin (BTC) downside forecast upward from $10,000 to approximately $28,000 this week after critics publicly challenged the original call as alarmist and damaging to investor positioning.
The episode has reignited a broader debate about the responsibility of prominent analysts in reflexive markets like cryptocurrency.
McGlone's initial $10,000 target, floated in a February 16 post on X, framed Bitcoin as a high-beta risk asset that could revert to pre-pandemic levels if U.S. equities peaked and recession followed.
He argued the post-2008 "buy the dip" regime may be breaking down.
What Happened
McGlone subsequently highlighted $28,000 as a more statistically probable level, citing historical price distribution.
Bitcoin's modal price - the level at which it has traded most frequently - sits closer to $28,000 than to the $66,000 mean since 2023, he argued. He maintained that his analysis "suggests why not to buy bitcoin or most risk assets."
The revision followed a public challenge from Jason Fernandes, co-founder of AdLunam and a market analyst, who issued a debate request on both X and LinkedIn. McGlone liked but did not accept the challenge.
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Why It Matters
Fernandes told CoinDesk his core critique remains intact. "$28K is obviously more realistic than $10K," he said, "Proportionately fewer things need to go wrong for $28K than $10K."
He had previously estimated a more likely reset in the $40,000 to $50,000 range absent a systemic liquidity shock - placing McGlone's revised call closer to his own lower bound.
Quantum Economics founder Mati Greenspan dismissed the original $10,000 call as "literally nonsense," noting that an asset with trillions of dollars in monthly trading volume reaching a $200 billion market cap would require an extraordinary set of conditions. He said $28,000 remained unlikely but could not be ruled out entirely.
At the center of the dispute is whether deterministic price calls by institutional analysts can materially distort positioning in markets that are known to react to public sentiment. Fernandes argued that "alarmist framing" puts real capital at risk in reflexive cryptocurrency markets - a point McGlone has not directly addressed.
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