Bloomberg Intelligence macro strategist Mike McGlone said Monday that the collapse in cryptocurrency prices may signal broader financial stress, warning that bitcoin could reverse toward $10,000 and potentially presage the next U.S. recession.
In a post on
After rising back to $70,841 at 07:00 UTC on February 15 from $65,395 late on February 12, bitcoin was hovering around $68,800 by mid-morning. The broader cryptocurrency market was also in the red on Monday, with 85 of the top 100 tokens posting losses. Privacy-focused coins monero and zcash fell 10% and 8%, respectively, in the last 24 hours.
“A healthy correction is what we should hear soon from stock market analysts (who risk unemployment if they are not on board), following the cryptocurrency crash,” McGlone wrote. “The mantra of buying the dips since 2008 may be over.”
McGlone pointed to several macro indicators that reflect elevated risk conditions. The capitalization of the US stock market relative to gross domestic product (GDP) has reached its highest level in about a century, he noted. At the same time, 180-day volatility in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 is at its lowest level in about eight years, McGlone added.
He also described the “crypto bubble” as an “implosion,” adding that “Trump euphoria” has peaked and is contributing to contagion across markets. Meanwhile, gold and silver are “getting alpha” at a rate last seen about half a century ago, with rising volatility that he says could “leak down” to stocks.
McGlone shared a chart comparing bitcoin divided by 10 to scale with the S&P 500. As of February 13, both were hovering below 7,000 on his chart. He said “volatile and beta-dependent” bitcoin is unlikely to stay above that level if overall stock beta weakens.
The Bloomberg analyst identified 5,600 on the S&P 500, equivalent to approximately $56,000 for bitcoin based on his scale, as an initial “normal reversal” level. Beyond that, part of their base case calls for Bitcoin to reach $10,000 again, depending on a spike in the US stock market.
McGlone’s perspective divides opinion
Jason Fernandes, co-founder of AdLunam and market analyst, told CoinDesk that McGlone’s thesis assumes that market extremes must be resolved through collapse and that the beta of bitcoin stocks guarantees a proportional decline.
“That’s a false equivalence and a one-way bias,” Fernandes said. “Markets can also resolve excess through time, rotation or inflationary erosion. A macroeconomic slowdown could mean a consolidation or reset between $40,000 and $50,000, not a systemic reduction to $10,000.”
Fernandes added that a move towards $10,000 would likely require a true systemic event, including a sharp liquidity squeeze, a rise in credit spreads, a forced deleveraging among funds and a disorderly decline in stocks.
“That means recession plus financial stress, not just slower growth,” he said. “Absent a credit shock or policy error that drains global liquidity, that type of collapse remains a low-probability tail risk.”
