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David Pokima
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Scion Asset Management founder Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager who rose to fame predicting the 2008 housing crisis, has shared a Bitcoin chart on X comparing the current pullback to the 2021–22 crash, implying that BTC could fall to the low $50,000s before finding a durable bottom.
Key Takeaways:
– Burry overlaid Bitcoin’s current drop from $126,000 to $70,000 onto the 2021–22 bear market path, hinting at a slide toward the low $50,000s.
– Not everyone is buying it — skeptics point out that a single historical parallel hardly counts as a pattern.
– BTC has shed roughly 40% since October’s all-time high and sits near $72,000, weighed down by heavy ETF redemptions and broader risk-off sentiment.
In a post early Thursday, Burry highlighted similarities between BTC’s drop from its October high of $126,000 to around $70,000 and the late-2021 to mid-2022 plunge, in which Bitcoin fell from approximately $35,000 to below $20,000.
When mapped onto today’s price levels, the prior cycle’s trajectory implies risk toward the low $50,000s.
Burry did not spell out an explicit price target, but the visual comparison was enough to reignite debate over whether Bitcoin is repeating a historical script.
The post follows a Substack essay published Monday, in which Burry warned that Bitcoin’s decline could trigger a self-reinforcing “death spiral” for corporate holders and mining firms.
“There is no organic use case reason for Bitcoin to slow or stop its descent,” Burry wrote in the Substack post.
Analysts Question Validity of a Single-Cycle Comparison
Not all market participants are convinced. Trading firm GSR captured the prevailing skepticism by asking, “Is it a pattern if it happened once?”
The critique goes beyond semantics. Back in 2021–22, Bitcoin’s crash came alongside aggressive Fed rate hikes, the implosions of Terra and FTX, and a market still heavily driven by retail leverage.
The landscape today looks meaningfully different — spot Bitcoin ETFs have reshaped flows, institutional players hold a larger share of the market, and the dominant macro risks have shifted from rate hikes toward broader volatility across equities, commodities, and AI-related spending.
That said, Burry’s warning arrives at a fragile moment. Bitcoin slipped below $71,000 on Wednesday before recovering, extending a week of whipsaw trading that has dragged the cryptocurrency to levels not seen since November 2024.
Burry’s Broader Bear Case Raises Stakes for Strategy and Miners
Burry’s chart comparison adds to a broader bearish thesis he laid out earlier this week. In the Monday Substack post, he warned that a further 10% decline in BTC could leave Strategy, the largest corporate Bitcoin holder with 713,502 BTC on its books, billions in the red and effectively shut out of capital markets.
“Sickening scenarios have now come within reach,” Burry wrote.
He also warned that a slide to $50,000 could push mining firms toward bankruptcy and cause tokenized metals futures to “collapse into a black hole with no buyer.”
Burry estimated that approximately $1 billion in precious metals were liquidated at the end of January as a result of falling crypto prices, a dynamic he described as a “collateral death spiral.”
Meanwhile, Bitcoin ETF assets have dipped below $100 billion for the first time since April 2025, and the average ETF investor is now underwater with the average cost basis sitting around $87,830 per coin.
Counterpoints Emerge as Some See Bottom Forming
Not everyone shares Burry’s outlook. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan echoed the view on the Wolf of All Streets podcast, describing the current environment as “peak end-of-winter behavior.”
“Winters die in exhaustion,” Hougan said. “There’s no news that ever matters in a bear market.”
Strategy co-founder Michael Saylor has also pushed back against concerns, emphasizing that the firm faces no margin calls and has no expectation of being forced to sell Bitcoin.
Burry’s track record lends weight to his warnings, though his calls have not always played out on expected timelines. His approach tends to center on shifts in positioning and market psychology rather than precise price forecasts — a distinction that may be worth bearing in mind as the debate over Bitcoin’s next move continues to intensify.
