Jim Cramer Predicts Bitcoin Price Plummet to $12,000

CNBC host Jim Cramer predicted on Friday that the price of bitcoin faced an impending crash to $12,000.

“I think the people who are involved with bitcoin have to take another stand,” Cramer said in a morning Squawk Box segment with the network’s Joe Kernen. “We need some guys to just say, ‘Look, this is the level’ — that’s typical of what happens when … it’s about to really drop big.”

He invoked Galaxy Investment Partners CEO Mike Novogratz as an example, in addition to naming MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. The latter executive’s company holds bitcoin valued at about $2.9 billion at the $20,000 price where the token has hovered, representing an unrealized loss of $1 billion. Saylor said earlier this year that the company would face a margin call on a portion of its holdings if bitcoin fell to a price of $21,000, but said more recently that MicroStrategy had resolved the issue so that any liquidation wouldn’t occur until bitcoin’s price fell below $4,000.

“So they just come on air, and they say … like, we had Saylor the other day,” Cramer said, before alluding to Mel Gibson’s 1995 film, Braveheart. “I mean, hello? If they changed the margin rates on crypto he’d be out in a second. So I do think they have to make a stand, Joe. They can’t let it go down anymore. Whoever the ‘They’ is. They’ve got to just [go] Braveheart with that thing.”

“You’re saying it goes down another 50 percent?” Kernen asked. “Or another 100 percent?”

“I think it goes to $12,000, where it was before this whole fiasco began,” Cramer replied.

Cramer has a history of making unusual — and generally incorrect — market predictions, particularly cryptocurrency markets. In a June 2021 segment of his evening Mad Money program, Cramer announced that he had “sold almost all” of his bitcoin holdings due to strict rules related to crypto that the Chinese government had imposed on financial institutions. “Don’t need it,” he told viewers at the time. His proclamation appeared to send bitcoin’s price surging for the subsequent half-year, from $31,000 on the day Cramer made his announcement to a little more than $69,000 in November.

The token has spent the last seven months in decline, reaching a low slightly below $18,000 on Saturday. Analysts expect it to settle on a price of around $15,000 before traders make a firm decision about whether to send it up or further down.

“It’s still a lot, though,” Kernen mused in Friday’s segment, referring to Cramer’s $12,000 price prediction. “For something where we don’t know what the heck it is.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cramer replied. “Well, it really isn’t anything, right?”

“I don’t know,” Kernen pontificated. “It’s like a distributed ledger. You can make a case.”

“Oh, yeah! ‘Blockchain,'” Cramer lamented. “Yeah, if I have to hear about that one more time!”

You can watch the full CNBC segment above via YouTube.