James Lavish: Bitcoin Straight To $250K! It’s "Blue Skies" By the End of the Year!

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Bitcoin's going to be much higher at the end of the year this year. I think I think we're going to get through this period.

[00:00:06]Again, first principles are that this administration wants to have peace going into the summer because we've got an an election coming up.

[00:00:13]Doesn't want to lose the election in the midterms.

[00:00:15]So, he wants to have stable pricing, gas prices down, stock market, you know, hitting on all cylinders, and and Bitcoin will just will benefit from all of that. And so, that's my expectation for the end of this year.

[00:00:32]Uh and then once we regain 100,000, I think we the march to 125 is is pretty expeditious, and then we we bump around there for a little bit. But once we get through 125,000, you know, [music] it's it's again it's blue skies until the next mental price point. A little bit 150, a little bit of two 200, 250.

[00:00:54]I'm highly confident that we are going to be much higher in the next few years.

[00:00:58]Do I think it will 10x from here?

[00:00:59]Absolutely. I think it's going to 20x from here in the next, you know, 10 years. Um but that's nothing compared to what it used to do, right? I mean, the reality is this thing could be up 100x in in just a few years.

[00:01:11]>> Is Bitcoin about to pull off a 20x run?

[00:01:14]Former hedge fund macro analyst James Lavish thinks so, and the institutions are already moving in. While retail buyers got shaken out by the brutal drop from 125k down to 60k, major players, pension funds, and family offices are quietly accumulating through ETFs.

[00:01:31]>> [music] >> Lavish breaks down why the bottom is likely in, how institutional liabilities will force massive buying, and the macro catalysts driving Bitcoin toward clear blue skies. Before we go on, please take a moment to like this video, subscribe to the channel, and turn on post notifications for more content like this. Every action helps with the YouTube algorithm and greatly supports the channel's growth. Thanks for your support, and enjoy the video. Obviously, folks out there think we're in a bear market. They think that we need to build back towards something that looks like a bull market in Bitcoin.

[00:02:06]Mhm. What are the catalysts that you see that are out there that get us back on track to 125k or above? Well, I mean, you know, that we had this 4-year cycle mentality uh that just played out. Like, it was almost like self-fulfilling prophecy. Um we had that major deleveraging event in October that who knows what was really behind it, but on the back side of that, you mean, you had a lot of OG selling going into that.

[00:02:32]Um and, you know, a million coins being sold off from old wallets uh going into that the all-time high of 125,000.

[00:02:40]Um I think, Rizzo, you know, um I think there were a lot of early adopters of Bitcoin that, God bless them, they held on to this thing for so long. They held on from $100 or $1,000 all the way up to $100,000. Like, when it gets to 100 grand, I am selling a quarter, half my stack. I'm going to go monetize my lifestyle. Not sit in US dollars, but buy the house I want, maybe the boat or, you know, the land I want, whatever it is.

[00:03:08]And um so it kind of self-fulfilled. And then, once that happened, we started getting that sell-off, we ran right into that bear market. Like, we just went from 125 that that just systematically just hammered all the way down to $60,000, 62 or whatever the the exact low was, depending on the exchange. But, you know, the So, it's kind of played out to I feel like if the if if the world stabilizes here and [music] we get through this this Iran conflict and [music] we stabilize the Strait of Hormuz and, you know, um we don't have an AI driven bubble that blows up the stock market.

[00:03:58]God knows that we're getting close, right? Um but if we can stabilize here and just [music] and not have some sort of event, I think we found bottom already.

[00:04:09]That said, we have a 20, 30, 40% sell-off in in >> [music] >> uh the regular stock market or tech stocks, it's going to take Bitcoin with it. We're going to have a correlation to one event. Everything will sell off with it. But the backside of that is what we just talked about. Print money, make sure that the the debt-driven system continues and uh and all these things, gold will start and Bitcoin will follow and will rip higher again.

[00:04:32]Um on the other side of that.

[00:04:35]But what do we need to restore confidence in Bitcoin? Well, I just I think we're just grinding sideways here.

[00:04:43]Um and people you know, we we had unfortunately a lot of uh FOMO at the $100,000 People finally said, "Oh my god, it's $100,000. I got to get some before it gets to a million."

[00:04:57]And of course, a lot of people have lost money. And so, there's big pockets of of uh of holders at 85, 90, $100,000 that they just bought retail bought late. And I think you got to get through that first.

[00:05:11]Got to get that goat through the boa, you know, to put it. And and then we'll get to the other side of confidence. But really, the truth is we need the people to broadly understand Bitcoin to get into that full like when we talk about supercycle, we're talking about people understanding Bitcoin more than just it's this speculative asset that's been around for a long time. Oh, it's dead, you know, or that it's for criminals. Um Get through that.

[00:05:47]And as these institutions are buying un- it's the craziest thing because all this time you've had retail able to front-run institutions in Bitcoin. You They've been able to buy this thing before institutions for years and years and years and years and years, and then all of a sudden ETFs come out, institutions are involved, now they can buy it on the on the market, they can buy the ETF, which is the underlying Bitcoin that they're ultimately they're going to force those uh ETF providers to buy.

[00:06:17]And now you have pension funds, family funds, uh you know, small endowments, small foundations that are that are buying Bitcoin through these ETFs, and the institutions are getting on board. But remember, who are the institutions buying for? They're buying for their underlying liabilities. Who are those liabilities? By and large, they're people, you know? Endowments, their liabilities have to do with the with the institutions that they're involved with, but pension funds, they're the underlying people, you know? I mean, that's the biggest that's the biggest group of institutions right there. And so, they're when people start understanding that, oh, man, my endowment has been investing in Bitcoin for years, maybe it it there there is something for to this thing, and I should be buying some.

[00:07:04]It's hard for us to understand in our Bitcoin bubble here. We're on Twitter every day with people who understand it all day long.

[00:07:11]And we're talking to people on podcasts, we're listening to podcasts, we're interacting with people like Michael Saylor, or you know, with uh Jeff Booth, or with the OGs who really understand it. And you you when you go out into the regular world and you ask your cash register, you know, your your cashier at the register, do you own Bitcoin?

[00:07:32]They're like, Nah.

[00:07:34]That stuff's crazy. I can't buy that.

[00:07:36]Are you on Polymarket? Oh, yeah, I'm I'm on Polymarket every day. So, you know, it's like people just still don't get it. So, they're they're they treat it as this risk asset that's already played out versus a poly market where they can bet 100 bucks on, you know, um whether Trump says a certain word today. You know, it's like they they'll bet on anything, but um they still consider it as part of that betting sphere, yet it's kind of it's played out. So, once they truly do get to an understanding that no, no, no, no, no.

[00:08:12]This is where you have a stable asset that's going to just keep swallowing uh unstable assets into the future, then you it's the that that tide turns.

[00:08:23]But again, I think it's a long time.

[00:08:24]But, you know, do I price predictions? I mean, I think Bitcoin's going to be much higher at the end of the year this year. I think uh I think we're going to get through this period.

[00:08:34]Again, first principles are that this administration wants to have peace going into the summer because we've got a an election coming up.

[00:08:40]He doesn't want to lose the election in the midterms.

[00:08:43]So, he wants to have stable pricing, gas prices down, stock market, you know, hitting on all cylinders, and uh and Bitcoin will just will benefit from all of that. And so, um that's my expectation for the end of this year.

[00:09:00]Uh and then once we regain 100,000, I think we the march to 125 is is pretty expeditious, and then we bump around there for a little bit. But once we get through 125,000, you know, it's it's [music] again, it's blue skies until the next mental price point. A little bit of 150, a little bit of 200, 250.

[00:09:22]Who knows? Um you don't need a trillion dollars to pour into Bitcoin to double the price.

[00:09:31]You need there to be fewer sellers at certain prices for it to just move higher uh and people willing to buy it at that higher price in smaller increments. That's just the reality of of markets. And so we'll watch it play out in real time here, but I'm I'm I'm highly confident that we are going to be much higher in the next few years. One of the most important debates surrounding Bitcoin today concerns diminishing returns. Can Bitcoin still produce the kind of extraordinary gains seen in earlier years or has its size become too large for exponential appreciation?

[00:10:05]Lavish acknowledges that mathematics and market structure inevitably reduce the speed of returns over time. As Bitcoin's market capitalization grows, larger amounts of capital are required to produce the same percentage gains. That is simply financial physics. But he strongly rejects the idea that Bitcoin's growth story is finished. [music] Have you accepted this idea of diminishing returns, right? That we're maybe in an era where Bitcoin just can't replicate the success of the past, the big moves from 2017, 2013. It sounds like you still think that's possible.

[00:10:38]Well, I mean not in the same timeframe, right? Um there is I mean there is a little there is definitely truth to the mathematical law of of of, you know, Giovanni's talked about it quite a bit of power law.

[00:10:53]Um you know, when you have that much money in the space it's just >> [music] >> taking it takes that much more money to move it. Um Do I think it will 10x from here?

[00:11:03]Absolutely. I think it's going to 20x from here in the next, you know, 10 years. Um but that's nothing compared to what it used to do, right? I mean the reality is this thing could be up 100x in in just a few years. You guys experienced that. I didn't. I wish I did, but um it's just a reality of of the the physics of how much money is moving in and out of it. Um now that said, you get to a spot where we have a hyper Bitcoinization, everything is priced in Bitcoin, all bets are off.

[00:11:32]Um that's a different world because now you're no longer pricing in dollars.

[00:11:36]Now you're just pricing goods in Bitcoin. It's a completely different um mindset. So, and then I'm not sure how you how you even price it. Like how do you even price what Bitcoin is worth at that point? Um cuz you're not going to be pricing in things like dollars.

[00:11:51]You're going to be pricing in in assets.

[00:11:53][music] You're going to be pricing in things like gold and and real estate and land and um you know, but that that's going to be a different moment. And I again, that's I think it's a a ways off.

[00:12:05]Um and that'll be that'll be hopefully it'll be less explosive than a complete collapse of fiat currencies cuz if that happens, I think there's just so much chaos in the world that it's not a good thing.

[00:12:18]Rather see us kind of, you know, if you're if you're a company that you've got a back office system that you're operating from, okay?

[00:12:28]Um and you want to adopt a new system, you don't just turn over to that new system in one day. You operate in parallel for a number of months or um sometimes years it depending on how complicated it is.

[00:12:42]And then at at some point you get the comfort enough that okay, everybody's ready, everybody's in you know, we know how this all works, it's not going to the glitches are worked out. Now we can go over to this other operating system.

[00:12:53]I hope that that's the way it works, otherwise I think it's going to be chaos and probably not a good thing for the for for socially for the world. So, I wasn't around for the for the early days of Bitcoin when people were on exchanges and they kept their money in Bitcoin um because there weren't stable coins around um and they they used Bitcoin as the pair to trade other stuff. It was they kept their money in Bitcoin and then traded around other stuff against it. Um so there was that use case that was pretty big on exchanges. Uh but that's kind of pretty much gone away already.

[00:13:27]Um and so I don't think that that really impacts on that on that side.

[00:13:33]If she's thinking, of course, you know, Bitcoin money, it's going to reduce the use case of Bitcoin as money. Well, I don't I don't really feel like that's the case. I mean, think about it this way. I think about it as Bitcoin is digital gold, right? At this point, we're talking about it as digital gold.

[00:13:49]We got to get it out of the first, you've got to get that great understanding that I talked about earlier, which is [music] having institutions institutional investors and retail investors all across the board have a firm understanding of what Bitcoin actually is.

[00:14:04]And that it can be that it's a store of value rather than just a speculative asset, which is what it's been for all this time because of, you know, just because of all of the um, the the narratives around it that just keep getting passed around. And the, you know, misunderstanding that keeps getting pushed by mainstream media.

[00:14:22]But, that's number one. And so, it we start there.

[00:14:28]You know, if you're going to be using gold as a currency, then it you've got to be able to have it divisible in a way that that makes sense. And of course, Bitcoin can overcome that. Um, but you're talking about here a hyperbitcoinization world where Bitcoin becomes the base currency and everything's priced against it instead of dollars, basically.

[00:14:52]But, I again, this feeds exactly to what I was saying at the beginning of the show, which is I think it takes a very long time for Bitcoin to become base currency of the world. Um, you know, I love Jeff Booth and I've had long conversations with him about this. I think it eventually happens, but I just don't think it's going to happen in the next 5 years.

[00:15:11]It's going to, you know, the the the the the go back to the first principles of the Fed.

[00:15:19]And, you know, we haven't even talked about the Fed yet, but the Fed is is supposedly has two mandates. Two mandates are stable pricing, which is 2% inflation, constant 2% inflation. The how they came up with that that 2% is you know, there's absolutely no real reason behind it. Some people say, "Well, it's the expansion of the gold supply." Or it's, you know, it it [music] was what Australia came up with.

[00:15:45]And honestly, the bottom line is, Reza, what I truly believe is it's what they can get away with. They can chip away 2% every single year, and people don't miss it. When it starts getting on the 5, 6, 7, 8, 9%, people get pissed off, as we saw in the last few years. So, stable pricing, keep confidence that inflation will not get out of control. That's number one. Number two is >> [music] >> they have to keep uh full employment.

[00:16:09]Whichever Whatever that is, we There's no real formula for that. It's like I mean, how many people are participating?

[00:16:15]How many people are like, "I don't know.

[00:16:16]It's like feels full." I don't know.

[00:16:19]But, those are their two so supposed mandates.

[00:16:23]The real mandate is keep confidence in the US dollar.

[00:16:29]Why? So, the US Treasury can keep borrowing.

[00:16:32]Why? Because Congress is not going to stop spending. And so, that's really what's going on there.

[00:16:38]And so, but we're and that and that's their job. And the reality is, you ask anybody in the world, you we if I hand you $100,000 of US dollars or $100,000 of Bitcoin, what are you going to take?

[00:16:53]98% of the people are just going to take dollars, cuz they're like, "Oh, no, Bitcoin. I don't know. It's it's for criminals. I don't understand it. It's it Maybe it'll go down 10% tomorrow. I I can't trust it." It's just not there yet. It's going to take some time.

[00:17:06]I mean, you were still at the beginning stages of it. So, um so, when you hear somebody like Cathie Wood talk about this, like that's kind of where what like where do what's your vision in the next 10 years?

[00:17:22]And my vision does not include hyper bitcoinization in the next 5 or 10 years. I think it's going to take a long time for the US dollar to lose enough confidence that everything starts getting priced in in Bitcoin.

[00:17:33]Now it could happen off of what Larry Kla calls the big print. We have another massive crisis.

[00:17:40]You know, we have another I I don't think people will stand for another lockdown, but you have some sort of major crisis, major credit crisis that causes the world to print again. Not just the Fed, but the central bank, the European Central Bank, the Australian Central Bank, the Canadian Central Bank, like everybody Chinese Central Everybody has to print.

[00:18:04]And then suddenly every single currency is just inflating so quickly that people are losing confidence in it.

[00:18:11]That's how you get to, you know, that world, but I think it's going to take a while. Again, and it's going to take a massive print. Not $5 but like $25 $50.

[00:18:21]And then people will sit up and take notice that these things are just collapsing. They're useless. They're worthless. [music] Uh what's your assessment of the move so far by the Trump administration?

[00:18:30]Well, you know, I mean the Trump administration has supposedly adopted Bitcoin and and cryptocurrencies and it's gotten pretty messy. They issued their own coins, you know, you have the Trump coin, the Melania coin and you know, they've got XRP in the offices all in the White House all the thing. It's just It's There's a lot of noise around it, unfortunately. We expected something more than just the the Bitcoin reserve that they announced, which was just holding on to the Bitcoin that we have and um >> [music] >> you know, maybe holding on to Bitcoin that they seized from illicit or illegal operations, but uh so that's been a bit of a disappointment to I I would think to most of the the Bitcoin world it's been a disappointment. Secondly, unfortunately, they've politicized [music] it. And so now you've got half the country who just believes that Bitcoin is a bad thing because now the Trump administration has has adopted it. It's for you know, it's supposedly for pedophiles and drug traffickers and money launderers and it's just, you know, it's the same stuff that you hear on mainstream media and it's just gotten louder on in in pockets. But all that said, the reality is nothing was going to stop Bitcoin, I don't believe.

[00:19:47]Um and the administration's adoption of it just kind of paved the way to for banks to say, "You know what? Now we can actually operate with this on our balance sheets and we can we can start presenting and offering different services around cryptocurrencies and specifically [music] Bitcoin and Ethereum and a couple of others, but what's important about it is Rizzo, when I was raising my hedge fund before this administration came in, uh we experienced some extraordinary put pushback from banks.

[00:20:28]We had a very hard time getting a just just quite honestly getting a what we call a prime broker for hedge funds, which it's your it's your basically it's your broker who holds all your all your assets and provides your liquidity and provides your settlement, provides your um your margin and all of that.

[00:20:51]Um >> [music] >> and and you when you buy and sell things, they're they're the ones who they basically custody it for you. So it's your it's your custodian, it's your banker, it's your lender, all of that rolled into one at a big level. So it's kind of like having your Fidelity or Schwab account personally for a big hedge fund.

[00:21:11]Ours isn't that big, but you know what I mean.

[00:21:13]But, we had significant pushback getting number one, getting a prime broker.

[00:21:19]Um number two, just getting wires from investors into the [music] fund.

[00:21:25]Even though we're Delaware based, we're you know, we have all we have all of our stuff filed with the SEC. We're way above board. We're just a traditional hedge fund that operates in the Bitcoin space. We invest in in any kind of company that is in the Bitcoin world. It could be early stage, late stage, venture, private, uh public.

[00:21:48]It doesn't matter to us. Debt, we've done everything. Um just like a traditional hedge fund. The only difference is we um our core focus is on Bitcoin set centric companies.

[00:22:00]And when they heard Bitcoin, they saw Bitcoin in the name, they just they would they, meaning big banks, uh Wells Fargo, City Group, JP Morgan, it doesn't matter. All of these big banks were either refusing wires, questioning the wires, holding up the wires, reversing the wires, just saying, "No, you can't send money to this. It's a scam. It's got Bitcoin in the name."

[00:22:24]Why did they do that? Did they really believe it was a scam? No, of course not. What happened was, Rizzo, is back then, you had Lizzie Warren and her and you know, anti-crypto army out there who were pressuring uh banks and financial institutions against doing business with any kind of Bitcoin or crypto uh related companies uh or or funds.

[00:22:50]>> [music] >> And so, and this was called Choke Point 2.0. It was real. We felt [music] it. We experienced it. We actually saw We had a couple of people debanked cuz they uh sent wires and um and refused to have them brought back and so they just debanked [music] them. They said, "Well, we're not going to we're not going to bank you." James Lavish ultimately presents Bitcoin not as a short-term trade, but as a long-duration monetary transformation unfolding across decades.

[00:23:16][music] The volatility, fear, and uncertainty dominating current markets are, in his view, temporary surface-level phenomena. Beneath them lies a much larger structural transition driven by debt expansion, currency debasement, institutional adoption, and declining confidence in traditional monetary systems.

[00:23:34]Bitcoin's path forward will not be linear. There will be crashes, political resistance, speculative excesses, and periods of deep skepticism. But Lavish believes the underlying direction remains clear.