Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe is still calling for Bitcoin to hit $1 million this cycle. In his view, the path there looks like the dot-com era: a parabolic run, then an 80% correction. That's the trade he's describing, not a straight line up.
The forecast lands with Bitcoin around $81,000 in mid-October 2026, roughly 36% below the all-time high of $126,080 set on October 6, 2025. Market cap sits near $1.63 trillion. The $1 million target is a long way from here.
The chart behind the call
Van de Poppe pointed to a chart from Rand Group that lines up five previous Bitcoin crash bottoms on a single straight line. Plot that line forward and the conservative bear case lands near $197,000 by 2030. That's the floor in his model, not the peak.
It's a tidy piece of pattern work. It's also exactly the kind of forecast that draws skepticism. Critics argue these calls lean on history repeating, and Bitcoin's past cycles don't come with a guarantee that the next one rhymes.
He's not alone at the top end
Plenty of well-known names have floated seven-figure Bitcoin targets. Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes have all been associated with $1 million calls at various points. The bull case has a crowd behind it.
It also has a loud dissenter. Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone has warned Bitcoin could fall to $10,000 instead. That's not a rounding error between forecasts — it's a full disagreement about what Bitcoin is worth over the next few years.
A market well off its peak
The context matters. Bitcoin's record high came a year ago this month, and the price has spent much of 2026 working back from it. A 36% drawdown is the kind of move that tests conviction, which is probably why the $1 million call keeps getting dusted off.
Van de Poppe's framing is worth taking literally. He isn't describing a smooth climb to seven figures. He's describing a spike, then a crash of roughly 80%, then a recovery. The dot-com comparison is a warning as much as a prediction.
The fight over the pattern
Most of the disagreement here comes down to method. The Rand Group chart treats prior crash bottoms as points on a trendline. If that line holds, the 2030 bear case is somewhere near $197,000. If it doesn't, the whole projection falls apart.
That's the honest state of play. Nobody knows whether Bitcoin's cycles repeat closely enough for a straight-line fit to mean anything. The bullish camp and McGlone's $10,000 camp aren't arguing about the same data so much as about whether the data predicts anything at all.
For now, the market is the referee. Bitcoin is trading near $81,000 — a long way from $1 million, and a long way from $10,000. The next real test is whether the current level holds as the cycle plays out, and that's something no chart from Rand Group can settle in advance.
