Wall Street Analyst Walks Back $10K Bitcoin Call After Market Backlash

$10,000. That's where Bloomberg Intelligence's Mike McGlone saw bitcoin heading just days ago—an 85% crash from current levels that sent shockwaves through crypto Twitter and trading desks alike.

Now? He's quietly walked it back to $28,000. Still a brutal 60% drop, but suddenly his "base case" doesn't sound quite so apocalyptic. What changed his mind wasn't new data—it was the market talking back.

When Predictions Meet Reality

McGlone's original call didn't just raise eyebrows; it sparked a full-blown revolt among market analysts who accused him of dangerous alarmism. Quantum Economics founder Mati Greenspan fired back on X: "An asset with trillions of dollars in monthly volumes could crash to a market cap of 200 billion? That's literally nonsense."

But the most pointed challenge came from AdLunam co-founder Jason Fernandes, who publicly dared McGlone to a debate on LinkedIn. McGlone liked the post but declined the invitation—a telling non-response that only amplified the criticism.

"$28K is obviously more realistic than $10K," Fernandes told CoinDesk after McGlone's revision. "Proportionately fewer things need to go wrong for $28K than $10K." His own estimate? A more modest reset to the $40,000-$50,000 range absent a systemic liquidity shock.

The Stakes Beyond Price Targets

This isn't just academic sparring over numbers. At the heart of the debate lies a crucial question: Can extreme forecasts from influential voices actually move markets and put real money at risk?

Fernandes thinks so. He warns that "deterministic, alarmist framing can materially influence positioning" in crypto's notoriously reflexive markets, where sentiment and reality feed off each other in dangerous feedback loops.

McGlone's original thesis positioned bitcoin as a "high-beta risk asset" vulnerable to a breakdown in the post-2008 "buy the dip" regime. If U.S. equities peak and recession follows, he argued, crypto would get hammered alongside everything else risky.

Reading the Tea Leaves

The revision to $28,000 represents more than just face-saving—it reveals how market structure has evolved. McGlone now points to "historical price distribution" as justification, a more data-driven approach than his earlier macro doom scenario.

Yet even the softened target faces skepticism. Greenspan calls $28,000 "unlikely" while acknowledging that "in markets we never want to rule anything out." It's the kind of measured response that highlights the difference between analysis and prophecy.

For crypto investors, the episode offers a masterclass in how quickly narratives can shift. McGlone went from predicting an 85% crash to a 60% decline in a matter of days—not because fundamentals changed, but because the market pushed back.