The end of May 2026 brought a dangerous anomaly to financial markets as the U.S. S&P 500 index stormed to historical highs while the cryptocurrency sector rapidly lost ground. This price gap forced Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone to register a hard technical sell signal.
In his outlook, the industry has launched a broad bubble-deflation process that risks bringing Bitcoin back toward its long-term historical mean in the area of $10,000. At the core of Bloomberg’s bearish forecast is the breakdown of a multi-year correlation.
Why record-breaking S&P 500 gains aren’t saving Bitcoin
Previously, Bitcoin had risen as a classic high-beta asset, obediently following the wave of global liquidity and equities, but now this mechanism has switched off. The situation worsened on May 29, when the industry’s benchmark, the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index (BGCI), officially collapsed below the psychological mark of 2,000 points, losing half of its value from the 2025 peak.
McGlone draws a direct analogy with the 2018 cycle, when, after a prolonged nosedive, Bitcoin “lost a zero” and stopped only near $3,000. But if in 2009 the first cryptocurrency was an exclusive asset, by 2026 it has been forced to compete with millions of tokens that dilute capital, while only dollar stablecoins retain real utility.
However, Bloomberg’s fixation on pure mathematical symmetry has traditionally caused skepticism in the professional crypto community. McGlone’s opponents remind the market that his past forecasts of a drop to $20,000 at the height of the bull market never materialized, because the analyst tends to ignore the changed structure of capital.
The main counterargument against the “Bitcoin at $10,000” scenario is the strong institutional framework created by spot ETFs from BlackRock and Fidelity. In the 2018 and 2022 cycles, these multibillion-dollar funds did not exist, while today they form a powerful price floor that is almost impossible to break without a total collapse of the U.S. financial system.
In addition, the fall of the BGCI reflects more the death of speculative altcoins, while Bitcoin’s own dominance usually strengthens during periods of crisis.
McGlone himself still leaves the market a chance for salvation, marking the $75,000 level as the “line in the sand”. Only a return and confident consolidation above this mark would invalidate the bearish scenario and prove that S&P 500 desynchronization was temporary noise.