Jiang Zhuoer, one of China's best-known bitcoin BTC$59,276.37 miners and founder of the LeBit mining pool, predicted that the current bear market will bottom in the fourth quarter at roughly $42,000-$44,000.
The forecast, made in Chinese on X, puts the low some 30% below bitcoin's current level near $60,700, and rests less on the cryptocurrency's performance than on Strategy, the largest corporate holder of the token, according to an automated translation.
Jiang analyzed Strategy's market net asset value (mNAV), the ratio of the company's stock price to the per-share value of the bitcoin it holds, which has dropped to 0.72. A number above 1 means investors value the company at a premium to its bitcoin stack; below 1 means they value it at less.
Jiang's figure has the market pricing Strategy about 28% below the bitcoin it owns, a sign of deep pessimism toward the trade.
《对本轮BTC熊市 见底时间&价格 预测》【重要长期预测贴】MSTR的mNAV已跌到0.72了【图1，图3】，（mNAV=股价/每股含BTC价值 比值，代表美股资金对MSTR的市场情绪，高于1为泡沫高估，低于1为悲观低估）接近上一轮牛市2022年5月11日的最低点0.7【图2】。根据最近STRC大幅脱锚等市场情绪事件，… https://t.co/V5s0Q2S2Wy pic.twitter.com/o9fqE9U80z
That reading is close to the 0.7 low Strategy hit on May 11, 2022, during the last bull-to-bear turn, he said, which leads him to think mNAV is near its floor for this cycle.
That time round, bitcoin reached its own low of about $15,500 some six months later, in November. Applying that lag to an mNAV low now points to a bitcoin bottom around late 2026.
Some analysts last week called on the company to suspend its bitcoin purchases, saying it had overextended itself.
So much for the timing. Jiang's price target comes from a separate model built on bitcoin's four-year cycle.
He compared the price pattern to a ball bouncing on the ground, each bounce smaller than the last. In his model, bitcoin's price swings shrink as its market value grows. The model output a low of $44,016 on Oct. 31, though Jiang said it is more reliable on timing than on price, which is why he gave a range of $42,000 to $44,000 across October to December.
The prediction lands in a week thick with bearish signals. FxPro flagged bitcoin sitting on its 200-week moving average, a level that preceded long stretches of weakness in past cycles, and floated $55,000 as a plausible low, while the debasement trade that lifted bitcoin alongside gold and silver has been unwinding on a hawkish stance from the Federal Reserve.
Read more: How STRC lost its par: The timeline behind Strategy's preferred-stock meltdown
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