Scion Asset Management founder Michael Burry, a hedge fund manager who rose to fame for predicting the 2008 housing crisis, shared a Bitcoin chart on
Key points:
– Burry overlays Bitcoin’s current price drop from $126,000 to $70,000 on a 2021-22 bear market path, suggesting that Bitcoin will slide towards lows of $50,000.
– Not everyone believes this – Skeptics point out that a single historical similarity hardly qualifies as a pattern.
– Bitcoin has fallen about 40% since its all-time high in October and is currently near $72,000, weighed down by heavy ETF redemptions and broader risk aversion.
In a post earlier on Thursday, Burry highlighted the similarities between BTC’s decline from an October high of $126,000 to around $70,000 and the plunge from late 2021 to mid-2022, which saw Bitcoin fall from around $35,000 to below $20,000.
When mapped to today’s price levels, the previous cycle’s trajectory implies risk towards the lows of $50,000.
Burry did not spell out a clear price target, but the visual comparison was enough to reignite the debate over whether Bitcoin is repeating its historical script.
The article follows a Substack article published on Monday in which Burry warned that Bitcoin’s decline could trigger a self-reinforcing “death spiral” for corporate holders and mining companies.
“Bitcoin has no natural use case reason to slow or halt its decline,” Burry wrote in a Substack post.
Not all market participants believe this. Trading house GSR captured the widespread skepticism, asking: “If it happens once, is this a pattern?”
This criticism goes beyond semantics. Back in 2021-22, the Bitcoin crash was accompanied by a massive Fed rate hike, the implosion of Terra and FTX, and a market that remained heavily driven by retail leverage.
Things look decidedly different today—spot Bitcoin ETFs have reshaped fund flows, institutional players have taken a larger share of the market, and the main macro risks have shifted from rising interest rates to broader swings in equities, commodities, and AI-related spending.
That said, Bury’s warning comes at a vulnerable moment. Bitcoin fell below $71,000 on Wednesday before recovering, extending a week of seesaw trading that dragged the cryptocurrency to its highest level since November 2024.
Burry’s chart comparison reinforces the broader bearish thesis he made earlier this week. In a Substack post on Monday, he warned that a further 10% drop in BTC could put Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder with 713,502 BTC on its books, into billions of dollars in losses and effectively shut out of capital markets.
