Price targets to watch as bitcoin struggles to hit $100K

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

We’ve talked about the bullish narrative, we’ve talked about the historical possibility of a drawdown, and now, dear readers, let’s talk price targets and analysis. 

It’s been a while since we spoke to Ledn’s John Glover to get his end-of-year expectations and the levels he’s watching. Glover uses the Elliott Wave Theory, which is a technical analysis that uses previous price movements to predict future movements. 

Basically, if we’ve carved out the high here at just below $100k (last Friday we saw it go as high as $99,800 before falling back) then he’s looking at $125,000. However — and this is the part that might make the big bulls sad — we might not see $100k breached this year. 

Glover said his “favorite” move right now (or the one that seems most likely to him) is that bitcoin’s “topped out at these levels, and we’re going to drop back down to kind of $75,000 to $80,000 and then moving into next year, then we’ll see that big rally.”

There is another scenario though where bitcoin quickly breaks $100k and climbs up to $125,000. If that happens, we could see the price top out at $160,000. 

But Glover pointed out that he expects to see a decent amount of profit-taking. After all, we’ve seen a $20,000+ jump in bitcoin’s price in just the last few weeks alone and it would be “typical … behavior when you’ve had such a big move ahead of the real event.”

“So we have the news event, which is [President-elect Donald] Trump getting in. Now the real event is Trump [taking office] and people will take profit ahead of that, waiting to see whether or not that’s really going to change the regulatory stance of the US and push things forward,” he continued. 

The lack of a so-called real news event is also why announcements — like MicroStrategy buying up over $5 billion of bitcoin — didn’t move the needle. 

Bitcoin’s pause may be beneficial to the overall crypto environment though. 

“We’re seeing a lot of switching from bitcoin into altcoins,” Glover noted. And here’s your reminder, as I wrote last week, HashKey Capital’s Jupiter Zheng expects a “massive altcoin season” when bitcoin dominance peaks. 

Glover does think that the final move up — whether it’s to $125,000 or $160,000 — could end this iteration of the bull run and would be followed by a correction. 

“Now, that correction isn’t going to take us back down to $20,000. I think if we get that correction from $160,000 we probably correct down to $115,000. If we get it from $125,000, we correct down to $95,000 or something … I think that somewhere in 2025-2026 we will finish this [bull run],” he said.

Can you even believe we started this year at around $40,000?

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.