Disturbing Bitcoin Signal, But Kiyosaki and JP Morgan Stay Bullish

As Bitcoin has just managed to recover from under $100,000, a recent report published by the on-chain data firm Santiment has revealed a major strategic split between BTC whales and retail investors.

According to this report, while sharks and whales have offloaded approximately 32,500 Bitcoin (worth around $3,345,465,500) since mid-October, small retail investors continue to accumulate digital gold on the dip. This massive divergence between large and small BTC holders could be a disturbing sign for the largest cryptocurrency, Santiment experts believe, since historically it has indicated an upcoming turbulence for BTC.

However, large influencers, such as Robert Kiyosaki, remain bullish, expecting the BTC price to go up more than 2x next year.

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Bearish whales vs bullish retail buyers. Is a correction coming?

Data unveiled by Santiment shows that over the past three weeks, whales have been consistently dumping their BTC supply. During this period, BTC tumbled from roughly $115,000 to under $100,000 before it surged back to the $103,000 level. Despite this bearish whales’ behavior, retail investors took that massive price pullback as a buying opportunity and have been adding more BTC coins, withdrawing them from crypto exchanges to their cold wallets.

However, Santiment analysts point out that while this continuous accumulation may indicate sustained optimism in the long-term, it also mirrors similar market setups that have preceded large price corrections during previous Bitcoin cycles.

Whales often apply certain market strategies. Therefore, they often start selling once traders’ enthusiasm reaches its peak and resume quiet accumulation when the market is shaken with waves of fear. The impressive amount of BTC (32,500 coins) sold by them recently may suggest that they are not only locking it profits but also preparing to face potential upcoming macroeconomic shocks. One of the leading triggers here might be the US government shutdown that still continues, which costs the US economy huge sums daily, with people losing jobs and businesses suffering big losses.

On the other hand, retail holders’ motivation is spiking now as they believe that this price drawdown is nothing but temporary. They are following a classic “buy-the-dip” strategy. Santiment points out that if retail holders absorb the coins sold off by whales, this could leave the market fragile in the short term.

Santiment stated that this pattern has already been witnessed before, and it happened during several pauses during the bull markets between 2021 and 2023. During those pauses, heavy retail buying preceded local Bitcoin corrections and consolidations. Now, a price crash may not necessarily be coming, but the market may be just hinting that a further leg-up is impossible without whales buying BTC again.

Robert Kiyosaki and JP Morgan share bullish 2026 prediction

Despite the bearish near-term warnings, prominent macro investors and Bitcoin advocates remain optimistic and continue to predict explosive growth for BTC in the coming 2026. Among them is Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the bestselling Rich Dad Poor Dad book on finance. This weekend, he took to X to predict another massive crash coming soon. He believes a crash of the traditional currencies will drive up the assets he advocates – Bitcoin, Ethereum, gold, and silver.

In the X post, Kiyosaki shared that he expects Bitcoin to reach $250,000 per coin in 2026. As for the rest of the aforementioned assets, his predictions are striking as well, although he did not name any target year for those. Per him, gold will hit $27,000 per ounce, silver $100, and Ethereum is to reach $6,000 (the $60 figure in his tweet is likely to be a typo). He stated that he had got his understanding about ETH from Fundstrat’s founder, Tom Lee.

The idea behind his staggering price predictions is that he strongly believes that the current policy of constant money printing is likely to destroy the value of the US dollar. In the past, he has constantly been referring to the Fed Reserve as a “criminal organization” as he advocated Bitcoin, gold, and silver. Only in the recent months did he add Ethereum to his list of hard assets (as opposed to the US dollar, stocks, bonds, and ETFs, including those based on BTC and ETH).

Aside from Kiyosaki, analysts of the JP Morgan banking giant have also predicted Bitcoin to reach $170,000 within the next twelve months. Per their report, it is related to the volatility increase of gold. The ratio of Bitcoin’s volatility to gold has dropped below the 2 level. Therefore, the bank’s experts believe that for Bitcoin to catch up with gold in terms of private investment volume, the BTC market capitalization needs to rise by 67%. This will drive the BTC price significantly up as well.

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