They all predicted BTC at 100 thousand – but who did best?

And it was worth the wait. On December 5, 2024 it finally happened – just one month after Donald Trump once again won the presidential elections and tapped the crypto-friendly SEC veteran Paul Atkins for the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, rehitting the mark briefly on December 17.

Although since then Bitcoin has slightly lost in value, with it trading at just under 100 thousand at the time of writing, the crypto-verse is bullish, saying that its value goes up over time. Possibly hitting millions even. 

But before we get back to that, let’s take a look at who made the $100 thousand prediction and assess its accuracy.

Tom Lee

Prediction quality: subpar

Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors Tom Lee/fundstrat.com

It goes without saying that the Head of Research at Fundstrat Global Advisors to Tom Lee is a remarkable figure in the crypto community and a well-known crypto bull who’s been regularly commenting on Bitcoin for almost a decade now.

The quality of his predictions, admittedly, varied over the years, and not always he got it right, with the Reddit crypto community occasionally pointing this out. Often in a not so flattering light. 

“I will be so happy when people realize how big of a fraud Tom Lee is. He has predicted $100K Bitcoin by the end of ‘21 and ‘22. But he keeps getting booked for CNBC,” Reddit user GloriousCarter, wrote.

Reddit user hishazelglance, however, disagreed, saying that, “we’re really starting to see more and more Bitcoin being discussed in the news and Tom Lee, though was pretty terrible in predictions in 2022, has been pretty sound in his analyses on average in my opinion.”

Regardless of how you feel about Tom, we believe that his quality of predictions isn’t the worst. At least in comparison to some other figures in this list. 

So, we give him the “subpar” grade for his efforts while he claims that Bitcoin could reach $250,000 by 2025.

John McAfee

Prediction quality: poor

John McAfee,John McAfee at the C2SV Technology Conference + Music Festival in San Jose, California, in September 2013. Photograph: Getty Images

Oh, the late John McAfee! The remarkable, one-of-a-kind figure who wasn’t afraid of controversy, bold statements, or being on the run. 

Just recall his eternal fights with the self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto Craig Wright, who’s suing everyone who challenges this notion (yup he’s still on it) and making, quite frankly, a fool of himself.

McAfee was one of the Bitcoin bulls who early on predicted the coin’s high value – but he did not toy with any modest numbers.

In 2017, he wagered that Bitcoin would soar to $500,000 within three years. And if not? He’d eat his private part on national TV. 

John McAfee’s tweet from 2017/X

In 2019, he doubled down on the prediction, tweeting “Bitcoin is in the mid 10's and people worry. LMFAO!! Why do you pay attention to weekly fluctuations? Look at the past few months FFS! It's rising drastically. I'm still positive about my $1 mil BTC price by the end of 2020. Alt coins like MTC and Apollo will rise ten times more.”

Though his predictions were not fulfilled, he chose not to honor his word and died in 2021 in prison. 

So, it’s safe to say that his special dish eating is officially off the table for good.

PlanB

Prediction quality: Acceptable

PlanB’s X handle/X

Have you ever heard of the Stock-to-Flow model?

If not, here’s your chance to find out who’s behind it: it’s PlanB.

They rose to prominence in the late phases of the 2021 bull market with the motto: all models are wrong, but some are useful.

Back then, his Bitcoin predictions, especially by community standards, were almost impeccable. This particularly holds for September and October of 2021 when it went from trading at $40 thousand to over $60 thousand. 

However, things did not go to model in November and December 2021 when PlanB anticipated Bitcoin to hit $98k in November and $110k respectively. 

As a result, some community members got angry, with Reddit user pizza-chit writing sarcastically “dial a random phone number and ask that person what their Bitcoin price prediction is. You would get the same level of accuracy.”

Co-creator of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has a special beef with PlanB. In 2020, he took to Twitter, dubbing his model “rationalized bullshit.”

Your daily reminder that 95%+ of articles of the form “event X will make crypto go (up | down)” are post-hoc rationalized bullshit. Also this gleeful watching of every disaster as a potential source of the moon continues to be just creepy…,

he tweeted.

He did not stop right there and added in 2022 another swipe. 

Stock-to-flow is really not looking good now. I know it's impolite to gloat and all that, but I think financial models that give people a false sense of certainty and predestination that number-will-go-up are harmful and deserve all the mockery they get,

he tweeted in 2022.

Vitalik Buterin’s tweet from 2020/X

Despite the significant delay in the accuracy, PlanB is already making their next big claim. Unsurprisingly, it’s even more bullish than the previous one, with his using the Stock to Flow model to say that Bitcoin could hit $150,000 by the end of 2024 and $800,000 by 2025. 

At the same time, he also expects the coin’s value to decrease  to $400,000 by 2026 and $300,000 by 2027 before hitting the $400,000 in 2028.

Buterin has yet to react to these statements. 

Cathie Wood

Prediction quality: Subpar 

Cathie Wood is another crypto bull who’s been on the crypto community’s radar for a long time. 

She is one of the earliest public asset managers who bought into Bitcoin when it was trading at $250 in 2015 through Bitcoin Investment Trust as back then, her fund couldn’t own cryptocurrency directly. 

In 2017, she stated that Bitcoin is “so much bigger an idea than even Apple which is a pretty big idea” and reaffirmed her bullish stance on Bitcoin, forecasting that the cryptocurrency could reach as high as $1.5 million by 2030. 

Is 1.5 million the ceiling? Of course not. According to Wood, it could reach $3.8 million per coin by 2030. Her assumption is that institutional investors will allocate more than 5% of their portfolios to Bitcoin.

She has also backed the incoming Trump’s administration, saying that she met him once and remains in contact with Tesla and X boss Elon Musk and crypto enthusiast Wyoming Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis.

Samson Mow 

Prediction quality: Good

CEO of JAN3 Samson Mow is another crypto bull who is known for his recurrent crypto takes.

In 2021 , he predicted that Bitcoin would hit the $100 thousand mark once “the sustained selling pressure from China starts to “ease up” in 2022, adding at the time that “there is significant sell pressure [from China] at the moment.”

But, like many others, he missed the mark. 

In June 2024, he took to X to once again try his luck and share his  take on how soon Bitcoin would be able to reach the $100,000 level. He referred to it as “$0.1 million” as he expects BTC eventually and inevitably to skyrocket to $1 million. 

In September, he reiterated his bullish stance, predicting that “The Godzilla Candle is coming.” 

Samson Mow tweet from September 2024/X

Now that Bitcoin has finally hit the $100 thousand, Mow is more bullish than ever, stating that he believes that the price acceleration will happen in almost an overnight manner. 

“It's not gonna be a gradual slow increase to $1 million a #Bitcoin, but rather a very short and violent upheaval that sends us there in a matter of weeks to months,” he recently said.

Why did we decide to give them the “good” mark for his predictions? Unlike most others in this list, Mow appears to take generally a slightly more modest approach to making his predictions while remaining bullish and hawkish. Hence the choice. 

Kay Van-Petersen 

Prediction quality: Poor

Kay Van-Petersen/www.salt.org

Van Petersen may not be as well known as others in this list, but he is also a recurrent figure in the crypto-space. The Co-Founder & Global Chief Consigliere at DCentral, he claimed back in 2017 that Bitcoin could hit $100,000 already in 2018.

His estimate was based on his previous correct prognosis on the cryptocurrency’s rally in 2016 when he predicted that BTC would reach 2,000 in 2017, which represented more than 100 percent of upside from its level at the time.

He added that he believes all cryptocurrencies, not just BTC, would make up 10% of the average daily volumes of fiat currency trade in 10 years. Foreign exchange ADV currently stands at just over $5 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements.

Though we respect his enthusiasm, we give him a poor grade for a highly inaccurate prediction time-wise. 

Michael Saylor 

Prediction quality: Doesn't really matter 

This is the final crypto commentator in our list, and if you don’t know him, are you even sure that you like Bitcoin?

Joking aside, Michael Saylor is an ardent and zealous lover of all things Bitcoin.

So devoted he is to the mother-of-all-crypto that the only worth and prediction you can expect from him is nothing short of making it to the moon. And his X feed only serves to prove. Just see for yourself.

Michael Saylor’s tweet from December 2024/ Michael Saylor’s X

Michael Saylor’s tweet from December 2024/ Michael Saylor’s X

With people like these, there’s no point in giving any grades or ratings. You just need to believe.

So what have we learned from this?

Though it’s tempting to say that all these figures were ultimately right about Bitcoin’s price predictions, it’s also true that it’s a bit like predicting black or red on a Russian roulette. Once in a while all of us are getting it right. The question is how much do we lose in the process?

One thing, however, remains evident. Despite price fluctuations and inaccurate predictions time-wise, Bitcoin has proved to be a resilient asset with a growing value over time.

Whether or not this growth will be sustained is an open question so do your research and invest with care.