3 reasons a strategist thinks bitcoin could plunge to $40,000 and why crypto winter could drag on for months to come

• Bitcoin could fall to $40,000 over the next six to eight months, one strategist says.
• Selling from crypto treasuries could exacerbate the pain.
• Bitcoin has dropped deeper into a bear market, and is down almost 40% from its most recent high.

The bitcoin winter might stretch on for months to come.

The OG cryptocurrency is already mired in a bear market, but the crypto's price could decline to $40,000 as its rout continues, according to John Blank, the chief strategist at Zacks Investment Research. That implies another 49% downside for bitcoin, Blank said, highlighting several reasons behind his in an appearance on CNBC on Monday.

"So at $76,000 from $125,000, which was the peak, we can get to 40,000," Blank said, later adding that he reached his $40,000 estimate based on the trajectory of bitcoin's recent highs and lows.

It's been a rough few months for bitcoin, which officially tumbled into a bear market in November as traders shifted to risk-off, sparking the biggest liquidation event in the token's history. The crypto's price tumbled briefly below $75,000 on Monday, its lowest level since President Donald Trump won the presidential election in November 2024.

The coin is now down 37% from last year's peak of around $126,000.

Here's why Blank sees the decline continuing:

1. The average bitcoin winter lasts over a year

Crypto winters tend to last a while, Blank said, and the ongoing latest freeze could still be in relatively early days.

"Generally speaking, a bitcoin winter is 12 to 18 months long. And these are well-understood technical features," Blank said, speculating bitcoin could reach the $40,000 mark within the next six to eight months if the rout stretched on for that amount of time.

Bitcoin's sell-off has gained steam recently amid heightened risk-off sentiment among investors. The crypto finished January with its fourth straight month of losses, its longest losing streak in about seven years.

2. Michael Saylor's Strategy could sell bitcoin

Michael Saylor's Strategy, the world's largest corporate holder of bitcoin, has come under scrutiny in recent months on speculation that the firm could soon start selling its bitcoin holdings if it finds itself underwater.

In late 2025, Phong Le, the bitcoin treasury company's CEO, said that the firm could be forced to sell some of its bitcoin as a "last resort" if mNAV, a measure of Strategy's stock price relative to the value of its bitcoin holdings, drops below one. That ratio currently stands at around 1.1, according to the latest information on Strategy's website.

Strategy has aggressively purchased bitcoin in recent years and has scooped up even more of the crypto amid the bear market. It says it has 713,502 bitcoin on its website, or around 3% of the total supply.

"When does the forced selling and liquidations happen to take us to $40,000?" Blank said of the risk that crypto treasuries like Strategy could start to sell their holdings. "We can get there very quickly, or more likely we're going to get there over the next 6 to 8 months."

3. Waning demand and liquidity

Blank pointed to one theory that bitcoin is an "inelastic" market. Inelasticity refers to the fact that the supply of bitcoin isn't affected by changes in its price, and he added that a fresh source of demand was needed to support the token.

"This really inelastic financial markets hypothesis is crypto. You talk it up, you pump it up, and you create new sources of demand and the price is inelastic and it explodes," Blank said. "So when the market gets unliquid, it's going to multiply much faster and pull away."

Declining liquidity is another factor that has contributed to the downward pressure on bitcoin and the volatility in the crypto's price in recent months.

Bitcoin's market depth, one measure of liquidity and the market's ability to absorb large trades, is down around 30% before its peak in October, according to data from the analytics firm Kaiko cited by Bloomberg.