Crypto analysts forecast bitcoin to crash below $100K again

The massive bull run that bitcoin (BTC) had been on in recent months came to a crashing halt on Oct. 10 in historic fashion.

After President Trump announced a 100% tariff on China and made threats about placing controls on exports of critical software, a massive selloff in the crypto space led to about $19 billion in liquidations across leveraged positions, the largest crypto liquidation in history.

The selloff spread across nearly the entire crypto market, but bitcoin fell roughly 16% within 24 hours, from $122K to $104K — including about $10K that was wiped out within minutes.

Besides Trump’s threats to China, the selloff was also triggered by an anonymous crypto trader placing a massive short position on bitcoin about 30 minutes before Trump announced his 100% tariff on China , earning that mysterious trader the nickname “insider whale” since the timing of the short seemed very suspicious.

Bitcoin hasn’t really recovered from the recent crash, trading at around $107K on Wednesday.

And now a couple of prominent crypto analysts expect to see BTC fall below $100K before the end of the year. The last time bitcoin closed below $100K was on May 7.

Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital asset research at Standard Charter, said in a note to clients on Wednesday that the drop below six figures is now "inevitable," as CoinDesk reported.

A few weeks ago, Kendrick projected bitcoin to hit $135K before the end of the year, but the lack of a solid bounce back from the Oct. 10 crash shows that the rally has stalled and the macroeconomic fears, especially the trade war between the US and China, appears to be dragging it down.

Kendrick expects the dip below $100K to be brief, and predicted in his note that this will be the last time investors will ever be able to buy BTC below six figures. He sees a few different macro factors driving the price of bitcoin back up, including the Fed easing quantitative tightening and a shift of capital flow between gold and bitcoin.

Kendrick noted that the sharp selloff of gold this week coincided with a small bounce for bitcoin.

Is the bull run over?

Although Kendrick sees bitcoin’s drop as a small blip before it begins rallying again, John Glover, CIO of digital asset firm Ledn, is predicting a much steeper fall for BTC.

Glover has gained a reputation for his accurate forecasts for bitcoin price movements, so his bearish view comes with a credible track record.

“Here’s my call: THE BULL RUN IN BITCOIN IS OVER!” Glover said in a post on X last week. “I firmly believe that we have finished the five wave move higher, and we will now commence a bear market that will last into late 2026 at a minimum.”

Glover is known as an Elliot Wave analyst, which is someone who follows the Elliott Wave Theory, a technical analysis developed in the 1930s by Ralph Nelson Elliot that groups investor psychology into five waves, three impulse waves and two corrective waves.

The “five wave move higher” was when bitcoin hit its all-time high of $126,200 on Oct.6 before the crash. It is now reversing course into bearish territory, according to Glover.

“My expectation is that the bear market will see us trading down to $70 - $80k, and potentially lower,” he said. “The bear market target will become clearer as we watch the price action unfold in the coming months.”

Not everyone is convinced that bitcoin is headed much lower.

Alex Thorn, Galaxy Digital’s head of research, acknowledged the recent headwinds that BTC has faced, noting that the Oct. 10 crash “has put a meaningful dent in asset prices, creating a short term price regime characterized by fragility and reticence “

However, Thorn sees enough tailwinds in place for the crypto market to go on another strong bull run.

“Bitcoin remains well positioned as digital gold to capitalize on fundamental doubt about government fiscal and monetary prudence, while the rise of tokenization and stablecoins coupled with an extremely favorable U.S. regulatory outlook should buoy the prospects of other important digital assets like ETH and SOL,” Thorn said.