October was supposed to be a good month for Bitcoin. That's how the story usually goes, anyway. Traders call it Uptober, everyone starts sharing historical charts, and suddenly another rally feels inevitable.
Didn't quite work out that way this year. Bitcoin finished October in the red, spot ETF flows were all over the place, and even the Fed's latest rate decision did little to change the mood. November hasn't been any kinder. Bitcoin slid to around $73,000 in the first ten days of the month.
Kevin Boeve, who's been trading since the late 1990s, thinks there's a bigger problem here. And it isn't really about Bitcoin. Boeve, now working in business development at Palladium Network, believes we're already in a bear market. It just hasn't fully shown up in the headline stock indices yet.
He's calling for stocks to fall more than 20% and crypto to get hit considerably harder, potentially losing 50–60% before the market finds a bottom. The strange part? He also thinks Bitcoin could reach $180,000–$200,000 in 2028. I wanted to understand how he gets from one to the other.
The AI trade is getting crowded
Boeve's biggest concern right now isn't crypto regulation, exchange failures or even Bitcoin ETF outflows. It's the amount of money being thrown at artificial intelligence.
Look at what's being spent on data centers, power generation, chips and all the infrastructure needed to support AI. The numbers are enormous. Some of these investments will probably pay off. Others are being made on the assumption that demand will keep growing at an extraordinary pace.
And a lot of that spending is being financed with debt. That's where Boeve sees trouble. If companies start missing their growth targets, or investors decide the returns aren't worth the spending, the selling won't necessarily stay contained to AI stocks. Markets are connected, particularly when leverage is involved.
Bitcoin won't be spared
There's been a lot of talk about Bitcoin becoming a mature asset now that Wall Street is involved. Maybe in some respects it has. But Boeve doesn't believe institutional adoption has somehow made the old boom-and-bust cycles disappear.
Think about what happens when a big fund starts losing money on equities. It may have to raise cash, cut leverage or reduce risk across its portfolio. That means selling whatever it can sell, not necessarily whatever it wants to sell.
Bitcoin is liquid, trades around the clock and is still treated as a risk asset by much of the market. In a serious selloff, those aren't necessarily advantages. And ETFs work both ways. They make it easier for institutions to buy Bitcoin, but they also make it easier to get out.
Boeve's forecast is for a 50–60% decline across major cryptocurrencies if the broader market starts coming apart. Ahead of the October Fed meeting, he put it plainly:
“The crash is already underway. By the time Wall Street admits it, it'll be too late.”
What about the Fed?
Boeve was expecting the Fed to sit tight in October, with a possible rate hike after the midterm elections or around the holidays. He was right about October: on October 28 the Fed held its target range at 3.75–4%, in a 10–2 vote.
He's particularly worried about what happens if rates remain restrictive while the AI trade starts losing momentum. That combination could be ugly. Companies carrying expensive debt have less room for error, investors become more selective, and the speculative trades that worked when money was easier to come by start unwinding.
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Of course, the Fed could go the other way. Inflation could ease, growth could hold up and the market might get through this without the crash Boeve expects. But that's not the scenario he's positioning around.
So where does $200K come from?
Boeve doesn't think a major crash would keep Bitcoin down forever. He expects that if stocks really do fall more than 20% and crypto loses half its value, policymakers will eventually have to respond. That could mean rate cuts, liquidity support or other measures to get markets moving again.
And historically, when liquidity returns and investors start taking risks again, crypto tends to benefit. Boeve sees that happening in late 2027, with the next bull market potentially running into 2028. His target for Bitcoin at the peak is $180,000–$200,000.
The next Bitcoin halving is also expected in 2028, although Boeve's argument is more about the availability of money than the reduction in new Bitcoin supply. It's an aggressive forecast in both directions.
What I'm watching
There are a few things worth paying attention to over the next several months. First, whether AI companies can actually turn all this spending into profits. Not just revenue growth or another big contract announcement, but returns that justify the amount of capital going into the sector.
Second, the Fed. A hike into an already weakening market would be a very different story from cuts that come because inflation is cooling.
And third, Bitcoin ETF flows. Not just the daily numbers, which can be noisy, but whether institutions keep buying when stocks start having a rough time.
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If Bitcoin holds up during a serious equity selloff, that's a pretty good argument against Boeve's thesis. If it doesn't, then all the talk about Wall Street having changed crypto forever might need another look.
Boeve could be wrong on the timing, the size of the crash or both. But the idea that Bitcoin could see another brutal drawdown before making new highs isn't especially far-fetched. We've seen that movie before. The question is whether this time really is different.
Reporting by Patrick Hagerty
