Bloomberg Intelligence Senior Commodity Analyst Mike McGlone Says Bitcoin Could Drop to $10,000
Mike McGlone, Senior Commodity Analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, stated in an interview with Bitcoin Magazine that Bitcoin could easily drop another zero to $10,000. He was previously one of the few analysts on Wall Street bullish on Bitcoin reaching $100,000, but has now turned bearish.
McGlone pointed out that the launch of a spot Bitcoin ETF effectively marks the end of this trading cycle. Bitcoin has become a high-beta "stock puppet" with no independent advantages, highly correlated with the stock market.
He mentioned that the market has priced in three interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, which poses headwinds for non-yielding assets including Bitcoin, gold, and copper. If the U.S. stock market experiences a 20% pullback, Bitcoin could fall towards the $10,000 support level.
In the interview, he also discussed the energy shocks in the Middle East, the midterm elections, the GENIUS Act and stablecoins, as well as why U.S. Treasury bonds are viewed as the next important trading direction. Bitcoin recently rebounded from around $66,000 to nearly $87,000, which he referred to as a bear market rally.
The current price of Bitcoin is around $80,000. McGlone emphasized not to fight the Federal Reserve and believes that the ETF and political support have failed to deliver sustained outperformance.
In terms of market mechanisms, institutional inflows through ETFs had previously supported prices, but once Bitcoin is seen as a high-beta risk asset, funds may flow out with stock market fluctuations. The beneficiaries are those reallocating to Treasury bonds or stablecoins, while those under pressure are positions in Bitcoin that are highly leveraged or closely correlated with the stock market.
Source: Public Information
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Mike McGlone, as a commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, previously expressed a bullish outlook for Bitcoin reaching $100,000, but has since repeatedly suggested $10,000 as a conditional downside scenario. His shift in stance is related to Bitcoin's underperformance relative to gold and its increased correlation with the U.S. stock market following the launch of the spot ETF.
In terms of capital flows, the ETF has brought institutional funds into Bitcoin, but McGlone believes this has also made its pricing more dependent on the liquidity of traditional risk assets. As the market prices in further rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, non-yielding assets face competition, and funds may shift from high-beta crypto assets to yield-bearing assets like Treasury bonds.
This is similar to other risk assets that failed to decouple from the stock market during periods of monetary policy shifts. Currently, after the popularization of ETFs, the independent excess returns have disappeared, and Bitcoin's pricing power has partially shifted from on-chain narratives to macro liquidity and stock market volatility.
Essentially, this represents a transfer of pricing power. After the ETF embeds Bitcoin into the traditional financial allocation framework, its price is increasingly driven by stock market beta and interest rate expectations, rather than purely by supply and demand or halving narratives; when rate hike expectations rise and relative performance lags, independent pricing power weakens, making volatility more susceptible to overall repricing of risk assets.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
The ETF is an entry point and also the beginning of beta.
Under rate hike expectations, non-yielding assets face pressure first.
After becoming correlated with the stock market, independent narratives need to be repriced.