Bitcoin Breaks $100k: Ju’s Apology and Market Shift Explained

Bitcoin surpasses $100k, challenging Ju's earlier bearish prediction, as institutional investors reshape the market and traditional models become obsolete.

Areeba Rashid
May 9, 2025
11:30 pm

Areeba Rashid

Areeba Rashid is a dedicated crypto news writer with a passion for making complex topics accessible to everyone. She covers the latest developments in the crypto world, including in-depth price analysis, helping readers stay informed and make sense of market trends.

Bitcoin’s recent surge above $100k challenges Ju’s earlier prediction of a bearish cycle.
Institutional investors, ETFs, and government bodies now play a key role in shaping Bitcoin’s market dynamics.
Traditional analysis models are outdated as institutional liquidity counters profit-taking cycles by large investors.

The CEO of CryptoQuant, Ki Young Ju, admitted that the statement he made about the end of the BTC bull cycle was wrong in his recent assessment. After Bitcoin broke the $100,000 barrier on May 8, 2025, Ju apologized to his followers for his March projection. This surprising rally occurred a few days after President Trump announced his new trade deal with the U.K., which has restocked the market sentiment.

Two months ago, I said the bull cycle was over, but I was wrong. #Bitcoin selling pressure is easing, and massive inflows are coming through ETFs.

In the past, the Bitcoin market was pretty simple. The main players were old whales, miners, and new retail investors, basically… pic.twitter.com/oN4n6vNc0s
— Ki Young Ju (@ki_young_ju) May 9, 2025

Ju had predicted that Bitcoin would experience bearish or sideways price action for the next 6 to 12 months in March. His analysis was founded on cyclical periods of profit-taking in previous market movements of Bitcoin. Yet, Bitcoin’s sudden surge above $100,000 disagreed with his forecasts. Ju confessed his fault, I am sorry for this wrong prediction. In the future, I will attempt to offer higher-level analyses.

Evolving Bitcoin Market Structure

The CEO of CryptoQuant admitted a fundamental change in Bitcoin’s market. He says traditional retail whale investors and retail traders do not dictate the market anymore. Rather, it is now subject to institutional investors, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and government bodies.

The Bitcoin marketplace has become much more diverse with the inclusion of ETFs, MicroStrategy (MSTR), institutional investors, and even government agencies looking at buying or selling Bitcoin.

This change in market dynamics has rendered such analyzes models obsolete, examples include tracking whale sell-off. Ju stressed that the entering of liquidity from institutional players and ETFs can now counterbalance the effect of large investors’ profit taking cycles. He, therefore, thinks that a new perspective is needed in analyzing the price movement of BTC.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin had risen over 4.37% in the last 24 hours, trading at $103,693. This is the first time that Bitcoin has broken $100,000 since February 2025. Although BTC-frenzy soared, Bitcoin’s daily trading volume has declined more than 30%, now it is trading at $51 billion. This decline in volume may be impressive, but it hasn’t halted the momentum of the currency on the rise.

Bitcoin’s Transitional Market

The BTC market is now at a transitional phase, says Ju. Neither is it completely bullish or bearish because the market has been slower in mopping up new liquidity. Despite the most recent price action being extremely bullish, the attention is still on the profit-taking cycle. Ju explained. He highlighted, in the midst of the bullish momentum, that further analysis of on-chain data is important in determining where the market is headed.

Ju’s new outlook unveils the new nature of the market of BTC where the old models no longer deliver the full picture. This next stage demands a more sophisticated perception of the market’s changing dynamics.