Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction for 2026, 2030 & More

The price of BTC today is $64,161.99, changing within the past 24 hours for -0.74% and -5.62% over the week. BTC’s price action is characterized by the Bearish sentiment.

The current volatility index for BTC is measured at 10.68%. BTC’s circulating supply is 19.99M. In the big picture, the highest price BTC has reached is $126,025 and its lowest observed price was $0.05.

Current Market Overview

Bitcoin's climb to $126,000 back in October now feels like a distant memory. The cryptocurrency has since dropped 37% from that peak, officially tumbling into bear market territory in November. What followed was a streak few expected: four straight months of losses through January, marking the longest consecutive decline in roughly seven years. The selloff even pushed prices briefly below $75,000, the lowest level since President Trump's election victory in late 2024.

The technical picture is equally sobering. Bitcoin recently fell below its 100-week simple moving average around $85,000, a level that had consistently acted as a safety net for nine straight weeks. That floor held every dip since November, giving traders confidence that support would materialize. Now that it's broken, the next line of defense appears to be $75,000, where buyers emerged last April. If that level fails to hold, analysts point to the 200-week average at $58,000 as the next significant support zone. On the flip side, reclaiming $95,000 would flip the bearish outlook entirely, but that feels like a tall order at the moment.

The important detail is that this isn't just chart-watching paranoia. John Blank, chief strategist at Zacks Investment Research, expects Bitcoin could fall to $40,000 over the next six to eight months. That would represent another 49% downside from current levels, a forecast rooted in historical patterns. Blank points out that Bitcoin winters generally last 12 to 18 months, which means we could be in for a prolonged slump. Adding to the pressure is declining market depth, down around 30% from its October peak, which means even modest selling can push prices lower faster than before.

Building on that, there's the Strategy situation to consider. The firm is the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, with 713,502 BTC, or about 3% of total supply. CEO Phong Le recently revealed that the company could be forced to sell some of its holdings as a last resort if its mNAV ratio drops below one. Right now, that ratio stands at around 1.1, uncomfortably close to the threshold. If Strategy starts unwinding positions, the ripple effects could be significant, especially given how thin liquidity has become.

On the other hand, not everyone is bracing for apocalypse. Carol Alexander predicts Bitcoin will remain in a high-volatility range between $75,000 and $150,000 in 2026, with a center of gravity around $110,000. James Butterfill of CoinShares expects a range between $120,000 and $170,000, while Standard Chartered has a $150,000 forecast (down from an earlier $300,000 call, admittedly). Sidney Powell of Maple Finance is more optimistic, targeting $175,000 and predicting that Bitcoin-backed lending will exceed $100 billion as a milestone this year. The consensus among bulls seems to be that more constructive price action is likely in the second half of 2026, after a period of consolidation and portfolio rebalancing.

There's institutional interest brewing beneath the surface, which could provide a floor. Abu Dhabi sovereign-linked investors disclosed over $1.04 billion in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs at the end of 2025. Mubadala Investment Company alone reported over 12.7 million shares of BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, worth about $630.7 million, while Al Warda Investments added 8.2 million shares valued near $408.1 million. That said, Bitcoin ETFs recently recorded $250 million in net outflows, suggesting retail and institutional appetite has cooled. Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick noted that buying by Bitcoin digital asset treasury companies is likely over, meaning future price increases will effectively be driven by ETF buying only.

The macro backdrop remains mixed. Fabian Dori of Sygnum Bank believes early 2026 could be broadly supportive for Bitcoin, pointing to signs of an accelerating business cycle and easing liquidity conditions. Progress on U.S. regulation, particularly the Clarity Act, could also bolster confidence. But there are headwinds: Jerome Powell's tenure as Fed chair ends in May, and his replacement could shift policy in unpredictable ways. Kevin Hassett, a frontrunner, is known for favoring lower interest rates, which could improve liquidity. Then again, U.S. mid-term elections in Q3 are likely to inject volatility, and a potential government shutdown could trigger short-term turbulence.

Here's the key part: Bitcoin is still trading above the $90,000 and $89,000 support levels, and a break above $92,000 could lead to gains toward $95,000. Copper's research argues that Bitcoin's traditional four-year cycle has been replaced by cost-basis return cycles in the ETF era, and with Bitcoin trading near its $84,000 cost basis, the pattern points to a move north of $140,000 in the next 180 days. Whether that materializes or we see another leg down to $40,000 depends on how liquidity, regulation, and sentiment evolve in the months ahead.

BTC Sentiment

Which way the market swings today? Overall, technical indicators show that currently, the sentiment in the BTC markets is Bearish. The Fear and Greed Index for BTC today is in the 8 (Extreme Fear) zone.

Bitcoin: An Overview

Source: bitcoin.org

Bitcoin has been the largest cryptocurrency on the market from the very start and arguably served as its cornerstone.

The whitepaper for Bitcoin was published in 2008, though it had been in the works for quite some time by then. In this document, it is described as a peer-to-peer digital currency and envisioned as an alternative to cash fiat money.

Genesis (#0) block was mined by the Bitcoin creator(s?), Satoshi Nakamoto, on January 3, 2009. Since then, it has grown into a massive movement and a diverse community and inspired the many altcoins that now form the crypto market.

What is Bitcoin? For more information, check out our Beginner’s Guide. Alternatively, for an introduction to Bitcoin in Plain English, read the Crypto Basics series by the ChangeHero team.

What Influences the Bitcoin Price?

Miner Reward Halving

In brief, “halving” is a preprogrammed event that reduces the block rewards in half, hence the name. It does not affect the existing supply but slows down the rate at which new bitcoins are minted. Historical price analysis claims that there are observable market cycles tied to the Bitcoin halving events. The supply rate growth slowing down makes the demand and price skyrocket.

The previous two halvings have triggered a long-term bull run for BTC and the entire cryptocurrency market. More can be read in our article on Bitcoin halving. The crypto community is currently watching the date of the next BTC halving: April 19, 2024. After block #840000, each new one will grant the miners only 3.125 BTC.

There are a couple of contradicting theories on the bullish nature of halvings. On the one hand, halvings significantly reduce issuance and inflation rates. Miners actively sell off freshly minted Bitcoins, so when the supply is cut down, the price rises. On the other hand, halvings don’t have a lasting effect on the network, meaning these events are priced in.

Effects of Adoption

Before the retail boom, Bitcoin was mostly owned by those who would come into the game knowing the rules. Once the hype kicked in, retail investors flooded in but, unprepared for the shakiness of the market, suffered losses. That was before any comprehensive regulation was in place. Setting rules for the game and ensuring the participants respect them is the key to adoption.

In 2021, Bitcoin received a legal tender currency status in El Salvador, massively boosting its scope of real-world adoption.

But in reality, as history shows, it’s not always this fine and dandy. Despite the claims that Bitcoin does not need a trusted authority to work, prohibitive regulations can damage its standing. For example, in May 2021, China finalized a complete ban on cryptocurrency trading and completed the crackdown on miners. As a result, Bitcoin price sank from $60,000 to below $34,000 but as the miners moved out, the hash rate and the price recovered.

Perhaps, not all adoption is equally effective for Bitcoin’s price. The 2018 rally is said to have been fuelled mostly by retail traders. It was different in 2021 when large players joined the game. This time around, with even more professionals exposed to Bitcoin through ETFs, industry insiders believe the upcoming bull run will see less volatility and more value build-up.

Additional Factors

These days, these factors have less influence on Bitcoin’s price but at the time, they caused significant price fluctuations.

In May 2021, when the first pullback in the Bitcoin bull run happened, the CEO of Tesla Elon Musk announced on Twitter that the car manufacturer would not accept BTC for payments citing mining’s impact on the environment. Since then, efforts to bring awareness to the use of sustainable energy in Bitcoin mining have been made. El Salvador is building Bitcoin mining facilities that will utilize geothermal energy. American miners, who now account for the majority of the hash rate in the network, established the Bitcoin Mining Council to provide transparency to the operations and educate responsible regulators on the nature of Bitcoin and crypto.

Updates to Bitcoin’s protocol also can shift the sentiment. The latest major upgrade in BTC occurred in November 2021 — the so-called Taproot upgrade. Thanks to it — love it or hate it — we have the Ordinals protocol, which made waves in the Bitcoin community and network. On release, Lightning Network also caused some hype and was thought to be a major driving force behind the mass adoption of BTC payments. It was cited as a factor that would drive Bitcoin prices to $250,000 in 2023 but as we see today, it was too optimistic.

Price dynamics of Bitcoin relative to altcoins are reflected in the Bitcoin dominance index, which serve as an important indicator for the crypto market at large. When more crypto investors and traders buy Bitcoin, the index leans to its higher positions and altcoins decline; the opposite is true as well.