Foreign media reports that Reza Bundy, CEO of Atlas Capital, backed by economist Nouriel Roubini, stated that Bitcoin could experience a pullback of up to 70% in the next six months, provided that global stock markets, particularly US stocks, experience a significant decline. However, he has not turned bearish in the long term and still expects Bitcoin to have the potential to rise to $150,000 to $500,000 in the coming years.
Short-term assessment points to a stock market correction.
In an interview with CoinDesk at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, Bundy stated that Atlas's assessment is that Bitcoin faces significant downside risk in the short term. He estimated a pullback range of $26,000 to $30,000, adding that if the stock market experiences a decline close to half the magnitude of the 2008 crisis, Bitcoin's drop could be even greater.
The report cited data showing that Bitcoin was trading around $63,000 at the time, down nearly 28% year-to-date. In contrast, driven by the AI trading boom, the S&P 500 rose about 10% and the Nasdaq rose about 19% during the same period.
Partially in line with Roubini's views
Bundy's short-term assessment shares similarities with the long-term stance of Nouriel Roubini, co-founder and chief economist of Atlas. Roubini, known as "Dr. Doom" for his accurate predictions of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, is also a long-time critic of Bitcoin.
The report mentions that Roubini recently reiterated in a Bloomberg market commentary that Bitcoin is more like a speculative asset than a fundamentally supported safe-haven asset. Bundy also stated that Bitcoin has not become an effective inflation hedge as some supporters claim, and in the short term, it is closer to a high-volatility risk asset with a high correlation to the performance of technology stocks.
The long-term target remains $500,000.
Despite a short-term bearish outlook, Bundy does not deny Bitcoin's long-term store-of-value potential. He believes that rising government debt, central bank balance sheet expansion, and declining market confidence in fiat currencies could still drive Bitcoin higher over the longer term.
- In the "moderate expansion" scenario, the target is $150,000 to $250,000.
- In the "fiscal-led" scenario, the target is $250,000 to $500,000.
- In a "global conflict" scenario, the market will initially fall before recovering.
He also mentioned a "deflationary recession" scenario, in which credit contraction initially suppresses Bitcoin's performance, followed by a recovery driven by central bank liquidity injections.
Atlas is advancing tokenized products.
Bundy also introduced Atlas's "techno-dollar" strategy. This strategy does not anchor to a single fiat currency, but instead adjusts exposure among assets such as gold, food, real estate, and defense technology through an AI-driven allocation model.
The report states that Atlas currently runs this strategy through the Nasdaq-listed ETF "USAF" and plans to tokenize it and deploy it to a public blockchain later this month. When asked why the fund has not yet included Bitcoin, Bundy stated that Atlas is still waiting for its anticipated stock market correction before deciding whether to include Bitcoin in its portfolio.
