Bitcoin's bull run may be over and the next move could see it drop nearly 50%, says a market vet who predicted the token's 2018 crash (2024)

• Bitcoin may have peaked for this cycle, and what awaits investors could be a steep fall in the token's value.
• That's from Peter Brandt, a veteran chart analyst who forecast bitcoin's price plunge in 2018.
• He notes that the gain in each bitcoin bull cycle from 2009 to 2021 has declined by 20%.

Bitcoin may have peaked at its high around $73,000 in March, and what awaits investors could be a 50% fall in the token's value.

That's according to Peter Brandt, a veteran chart analyst and the founder of Factor Trading, who successfully forecast bitcoin's steep plunge in 2018, when the token lost about 80% of its value.

"It has happened. It is real. You may not want to believe it, but I place a 25% chance that Bitcoin has already topped for this cycle," Brandt wrote in a note recently.

He added that he expects a plummet back to the 2021 lows in the mid-$30,000 range, which would mark a drop of roughly 50% from the current level.

Brandt backed up his rationale with a concept he refers to as "exponential decay," with each bull cycle of bitcoin from 2009 to 2021 shrinking by about 20% compared to the last.

Applied to the latest rally, exponential decay says the current bullish trend might increase about 4.5 times the growth seen in the previous cycle from 2018-2021.

Given that framework, the high for this cycle was projected to be $72,723, a milestone that the world's largest cryptocurrency surpassed in March and which may prove that the bitcoin bull run is over for now.

"The fact is that the bull market cycles in Bitcoin have lost a tremendous amount of thrust over the years," he said.

Yet, Brandt notes that it might not be all that bad if bitcoin lost steam after such precipitous gains, pointing to similar moves in gold, which hit a low in late 2022 after a period of big gains, before rallying sharply to new highs this year.

"From a classical charting point of view, such a decline is the most bullish thing that could happen from a long-term view. If you want to see an example of such a chart structure, look at the Gold chart from Aug 2020 to Mar 2024," he wrote.

After skyrocketing to $73,835 in mid-March, the token has stumbled. The bitcoin halving, which took place this month and which has been widely anticipated as a bullish catalyst, has failed to push the token meaningfully higher so far. Prices have stumbled further on renewed fears of hawkish monetary policy in recent weeks as inflation remains stubbornly high.

Bitcoin was trading around $62,955 on Tuesday, down by about 15% from the record high reached in March.