Veteran Wall Street analyst and BitMine chair Tom Lee has now taken back one of the most audacious Bitcoin calls of the cycle.
He told CNBC on Wednesday that his once-firm $250,000 year-end target is now only a tentative “maybe.”
Tom Lee Softens Stance in Rare Pivot
During a live CNBC interview Tom Lee acknowledged the shift in tone that sent ripples through crypto Twitter.
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“I think it’s still very likely that Bitcoin is going to be above $100,000 before year-end, and maybe even to a new high,” he said.
As you probably know, this is a far cry from the confident $250,000 prediction he’d been touting since early 2024 and as recently as October.
The softened outlook marks the first time Tom Lee has publicly walked back the headline-grabbing forecast that made him the poster child for Bitcoin bulls this cycle.
Even Galaxy Digital’s Mike Novogratz had cautioned that reaching a quarter-million dollars would require “crazy stuff” to happen.
Yet Tom Lee isn’t throwing in the towel entirely.
“I still think some of those best days are going to happen before year-end,” he insisted, with just 35 days left on the 2025 calendar.
Bitcoin’s infamous 10-day rule still apparently gives him hope. The BitMine chair reminded viewers that the asset historically makes the vast majority of its yearly gains in roughly ten explosive trading sessions.
Miss those days, and you miss nearly everything, is a point echoed by Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley earlier this year.
In 2024 alone, Bitcoin’s top 10 performing days delivered a 52% return, while the other 355 days averaged a painful -15%.
Bitcoin has been licking its wounds since October 10 from a brutal $19 billion liquidation wave triggered by President Trump’s surprise 100% tariff threat on Chinese goods.
It has been in red for six days straight before finally coming out of the water to breathe at above $90,000 on Wednesday. This is despite November being Bitcoin’s strongest month on record since 2013.
Of course, Tom Lee predicted in January 2018 that Bitcoin could hit $125,000 by 2022 and it finally did, but not until October 2025, three years later.
