Bitcoin analysts split on floor between $1k and $20k

Bitcoin tests the $18,000 support level

A buy order at $20,000. Another, more ambitious, at $5,000. And a third, almost a joke, at $100. This is the map with which much of the market tries to guess where Bitcoin's crash ends. With the same charts in front of them, answers do not coincide at all: Bitcoin price has bets for all tastes, from $1,000 to $250,000.

At the time of this discussion, one of the calculations circulating in the thread places the accumulated correction at around 50% from highs, and the big debate is no longer if the price falls, but how much is left. Because Bitcoin has no earnings, no dividends, and no underlying asset to set an accounting floor. It only has buyers. And when buyers hide, the floor is decided by the last order that holds.

Where is Bitcoin's floor?

The first answer is technical and quite earthly: round numbers. The argument is that large orders are placed at clean figures —$20,000, $30,000, $40,000— and there the strongest supports concentrate, along with Fibonacci retracements. The evidence pointed out: the low of one of the recent sessions was $30,000 exactly. Too round to be coincidence.

The next level is $20,000. Some argue that there is no real cushion until then, and others place $18,000 as the line separating correction from regime change. If Bitcoin loses $18,000, the scenario drawn is a bear market, with targets plummeting to $1,000 dollars and even, in the most aggressive version, down to $100.

And hovering over everything, a suspicion repeated without proof: that there is a $1 billion position in Bitcoin held by a third party and that the market wants to liquidate it. No one proves it.

From 50% drop to historical 72%

Here the debate becomes interesting for those who do not believe in prophecies. The argument of those comparing the current drop with previous ones maintains that we are at 50% and the largest historical crash was 72%. If that figure repeats, the floor remains much lower. If the record breaks, the question is how much further.

Bearish scenarios have specific figures: between $1,000 and $5,000 in the most repeated, a return to 2013 levels in the most literary, and €8,000 or €5,000 in intermediate bets. A particularly uncomfortable forecast does not put the figure at the end, but at the beginning: first a band of $5,000 to $9,000, then a long tug-of-war and then a slow dissipation, like the foam of a bubble deflating alone.

Hodl is not traded anywhere. But it is repeated in the exchange.

The bullish scenario: $120,000 and "very predictable" cycles

Not everyone rows towards the abyss. The opposing thesis relies on historical cycles: after capitulation comes consolidation and then the rally. In that reading, Bitcoin touches $20,000 first, Ethereum drops to around $1,000, and from there a new cycle starts with Bitcoin above $120,000 and Ethereum at $15,000-$16,000. The horizon, two years.

Short-term versions go even further. Some fix the price at $55,000 in less than a month, some say it will keep falling to $100,000 in less than six months —the verb is the same, the direction is opposite— and some dare with $200,000-$250,000 by late 2022, "without parachute" but upwards.

The advice repeated among bulls is not to buy now. It is not to move. The argument: trading without experience is the fast way to lose your shirt, and the knife is still falling. Most people, they say, lack the guts to withstand volatility.

Mining Bitcoin: the bearish argument that doesn't talk about money

Part of the pessimism does not come from charts, but from the electricity bill. Proof-of-work mining consumes energy at a rate considered unsustainable with cheap energy withdrawing, and from there arises the prediction that cryptocurrencies will simply dilute because keeping the network lit will stop making sense.

The counterargument has two legs. The first, technical: the mining system is not inefficient in itself, it works with modest equipment; what skyrocketed consumption was profitability, which attracted too many miners. The second, comparative: gold mining, with its ecological damage, receives fewer public reproaches than Bitcoin.

And a third path, more speculative: that energy is also a variable, not a constant, and that a new generation of renewables would change the entire equation without needing nuclear reactors.

The tulip story and the free money thesis

The sector's oldest comparison remains valid: Bitcoin as the 21st-century tulip, the biggest hoax since the Dutch bubble. It is the stance of those who ask, with sarcasm, how far can something that never had value fall. For that current, the asset is nothing more than a string of characters waiting for a buyer.

The counterargument does not deny the bubble: it reframes it. Cryptocurrencies were born to be money free from State control, not a speculation product, and that misuse would be the real problem, not the technology. Added to this is the most radical monetary thesis: Bitcoin tends to infinity because fiat tends to zero.

Meanwhile, the doom detector has been on for years in both directions: when the price sinks, those announcing the end appear, and when it rises, those proclaiming a new paradigm. It has been falling upwards for ten years, summarizes the most repeated irony.

With a calculation placing the largest historical drop at 72% and the current correction halfway, any floor set today will have to coexist with an uncomfortable fact: the last relevant low was $30,000 exactly. It might have been the floor. It might have just been a stop.