Have we reached the bitcoin bull run’s final wave?

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I’ve been getting Ledn CIO John Glover’s bitcoin price technical analyses by email for a while now. 

But I was finally able to catch up with him in person at the Digital Asset Summit.

Glover, ex-managing director at TD Securities and Barclays, uses Elliott Wave Theory — examining price patterns related to changes in investor sentiment and psychology — to predict BTC price. 

Essentially, the theory goes: A deeply liquid market will move in the main trend direction in five waves (three “motive” phases pushing price up, with two downward “corrective” phases in between). There are then three waves that go opposite that trend. 

Traders sometimes use this theory alongside other technical analyses to identify possible entry and exit points.

Last week, we perhaps neared the end of Wave 4 (the way down) within this broader BTC price uptrend that began in 2023 at around $16,000, according to Glover. The market, he noted, was not moved by the pro-crypto remarks that Donald Trump recorded for last week’s Blockworks conference. 

But BTC saw a boost over the weekend. Its price of $88,370, as of 2:10 pm ET Monday, was 2.6% higher than 24 hours prior.

Regardless of whether Wave 4 has officially ended or not, Glover expects Wave 5 to lead to a BTC price rally to between $130,000 and $135,000 by Q1 2026.

Taking the convo beyond specific price levels, I asked Glover about how bitcoin is perceived — as a safe-haven to some, and as a risk asset to others.

“Even though we have deep liquidity, there’re not enough participants in [bitcoin] that have a complete understanding of what it is yet and have formed that view,” he said.

Those believing BTC is “digital gold” (and an inflation hedge) might be bulking up their bitcoin ETF positions, for example, as the price has come down. Those fearing that BTC’s rise to roughly $109,000 was just the result of a “Trump pump” might be exiting in panic. 

“To me, [bitcoin] is digital gold, and once more and more traditional finance players get in, it will start tracking gold much more closely,” Glover added.

Nearly one-fifth of surveyed financial advisers with no crypto allocation for clients planned to add that exposure in 2025 (more than double the previous year’s 8%). But those who haven’t committed yet will likely want to see BTC start moving up again before they do, Glover said.   

Those tend to be stickier positions. 

“If people have it in their portfolios, I don’t think they’re going to freak out if it’s correcting,” Glover said. “I think they’re going to say, ‘OK, it’s only 1% of my portfolio, I’m happy to hold that for the long term.’”

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