Bitcoin has bounced back from the brink this week, with the bitcoin price climbing toward $70,000 after coming within touching distance of disaster.
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The bitcoin price remains down by nearly 50% from its October 2025 peak of $126,000 per bitcoin, a sudden decline that’s left traders braced for an imminent, “massive trigger.”
Now, as the chief executive of Goldman Sachs reveals a surprise bitcoin flip, influential cofounder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, has issued a worrying bitcoin price prediction.
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Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales has issued a serious bitcoin price warning.
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“People who think that bitcoin is going to zero are likely mistaken,” Wales, who first experimented with bitcoin payments on Wikipedia as far back as 2014, posted to X.
“The design is robust enough that it will continue to exist in perpetuity, barring some currently unforeseen breakdown in cryptography or a surprise 51% attack (even then, a fork would carry on I would imagine),” Wales wrote, referring to a possibility that could occur if a quantum computer is able to break the cryptographic algorithms that underpin bitcoin and much of the internet.
However, Wales fears bitcoin is more likely to be susceptible to a long, slow march into irrelevance.
“What [bitcoin] can do, though, is decline to a price consistent with hobbyist tinkering,” Wales wrote. “Because it is a complete failure as a currency, as a store of value, etc., it isn’t going to become the dominant money of the future.”
Wales predicted the bitcoin price could fall as low as $10,000 (“in today’s dollars”) by 2050, suggesting that continued inflation could make $10,000 far less valuable by that time.
It could “possibly [go] much lower,” Wales added.
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The bitcoin price has crashed from a peak of $126,000 per bitcoin in October last year, though many bitcoin price bulls have issued bitcoin price predictions that see it bouncing back.
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The bitcoin price has for years defied predictions that it’s headed toward zero, even as it remains highly volatile.
This month, the closely-watched crypto fear and greed index, a measure of bitcoin and crypto market sentiment, dropped to its lowest level ever recorded, while Google searches for phrases “bitcoin going to zero” and “is bitcoin dead?” have spiked.
Bitcoin’s sentiment slump comes after a months of price decline in the face of gold’s historical rally, destroying the idea that bitcoin had carved out a niche as a safe haven asset that would rise alongside gold in times of financial risk—a new asset class that was often referred to as “digital gold.”
However, bitcoin continues to win supporters, with the family of U.S. president Donald Trump emerging in recent years as among the most bullish on the future of bitcoin.
Trump’s son Eric last week reiterated his prediction that bitcoin will eventually reach $1 million, saying he has never been more bullish on the cryptocurrency.
“I’m a huge proponent because I do think it hits $1 million dollars,” Eric Trump said during the World Financial Forum at his father’s Florida resort Mar-a-Lago in comments reported by Coindesk. “Go back two years. Bitcoin was at $16,000. Where is it at right now, $70,000?”