Peter Schiff is starting 2026 with a straightforward message for Bitcoin holders. In his view, trading is crowded, “good news” has dried up, and instruments created to maximize Bitcoin exposure are already seeing unwinding.
Schiff’s Bitcoin Predictions for 2026
In the Jan. 1 “Year-end Special” episode outlining his market predictions for 2026, the prominent Bitcoin critic argued that cryptocurrencies spent 2025 doing the only thing they shouldn’t have done in a year filled with pro-crypto rhetoric: fall. He framed the poor performance as foreshadowing what would happen next.
Schiff contrasted BTC’s year with both risk assets and his preferred macro hedge. Stocks ended 2025 higher, with the Dow up 13%, the S&P 500 up 16.4% and the Nasdaq up 20.4%, he said, with gold up 64% and silver more than doubling. He said Bitcoin is an outlier on the wrong side.
“When the year started, everyone at CNBC was buzzing about Bitcoin,” Schiff said, describing a mix of stories that included “Bitcoin President,” “Bitcoin Strategic Reserve,” big corporate purchases, ETF growth, and more. “Bitcoin was one of the only things that fell this year.”
He pointed to the ETF’s performance as evidence for his claim, noting that the Bitcoin ETF “closed out for the year (…)” and was “down just over 7.5% for the year,” despite strong gains for the Nasdaq and gold.
He then conveyed the nitty-gritty of his setting. “If something doesn’t go up when everyone thinks it’s going to go up, that’s a pretty good sign that it’s going to go down,” he said. “If the market cannot go up on good news, it means that all that good news is already priced into the market (…), which means it can only go down.”
Strategy as an “advertisement” for stress tests
Schiff also used Strategy, the market’s most-watched Bitcoin leverage agent, as his preferred diagnostic for sentiment and structural demand.
He said Strategy ended 2025 at a 52-week low, “down 47.5% year-over-year” and “67% below its 52-week high,” calling the company a “poster” for maximum BTC leverage. Schiff’s argument was not that Strategy failed to buy BTC, but that the stock market had already priced in the downside of the model.
Schiff went further, claiming that Strategy’s five-year average BTC cost basis was around $75,000, suggesting it was only making small gains as Bitcoin hovered around $87,000. “This is an increase of about 16%, an increase of 3% a year over five years,” he said, arguing that it undermines the argument that trade is a one-way compounding machine. He also argued that it was not realistically possible for Strategy to exit at the average price without slippage, and framed “profits” as vulnerable in a liquidation scenario.
From there, Schiff extended the theory to the market structure in 2026. If the strategy slows down or stops buying, and ETF flows become decisively negative, marginal demand may not exist when needed. “ETFs are currently on sale,” he said. “They went from being large-scale Bitcoin buyers to consistent Bitcoin sellers.”
Schiff declined to name a 2026 BTC price target in the video, but the gold bug has set a downside “floor target” of around $50,000 in mid-December 2025. He argued that Bitcoin would not fall as much as Strategy predicted unless it also falls significantly.
Year-end special: My 2026 economic and market predictions https://t.co/pqy8bWJBjP
— Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) January 1, 2026
macro background
Schiff’s broad macro call for 2026 combines slowing growth, persistent inflation, and increased political pressure on monetary policy, conditions that he expects to support precious metals and weigh on Bitcoin.
He argues that the Fed is already effectively back in easing mode, saying, “Even though we haven’t officially acknowledged that we are doing quantitative easing, we are just going back to quantitative easing,” and expects further interest rate cuts as the dollar weakens. He also linked tariffs to higher consumer prices and pressure on profit margins, predicting a 2026 environment of “a weak economy” but “stronger inflation,” a combination he called “toxic.”
Schiff’s practical conclusion for crypto listeners was straightforward. He urged viewers to “unload more than $87,000 in Bitcoin,” while reiterating that he expects capital to rotate into gold and silver as “the tulips of cryptocurrencies (…) bloom.”
At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $89,517.
Featured image from YouTube, chart from TradingView.com
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