FFTT’s Gromen Warns: Institutional Investors Won’t Drive BTC to $150K Without Major Catalysts
Institutional money alone won't cut it. That's the stark warning from FFTT's Luke Gromen—the kind of sobering reality check Wall Street loves to ignore until the quarterly reports land.
The $150K Mirage
Forget the hopium. Gromen argues that passive institutional flows, the kind that gets asset managers promoted for 'diversification,' lack the explosive power needed to propel Bitcoin to the mythical $150,000 threshold. It's steady fuel, not rocket fuel.
Catalyst or Bust
The real surge requires a paradigm-shifting trigger. Think regulatory green lights from major economies, a sovereign adoption play, or a traditional finance meltdown that sends capital scrambling for the exits—and into crypto. Without a seismic event, institutions will just keep nibbling at the edges.
The Waiting Game
So the market waits. It watches for the policy shift, the black swan, the 'Netscape moment' for digital assets. Until then, the big money moves with the cautious, calculated pace of a pension fund manager picking a lunch spot—utterly terrified of being wrong and missing the 3pm tee time.
Gromen's take is a cold splash of water on the 'institutions will save us' narrative. They'll help, but they won't heroically launch the price to new heavens without a major reason to hit the gas. In finance, that reason usually comes down to fear or greed—and right now, the fear of missing out isn't quite strong enough.
Gromen argues against institutions lifting Bitcoin to $150,000
Currently, Bitcoin is trading at $89,833, up 0.7% from the previous day and down 7.4% in the last 7 days. Data from CoinMarketCap reveal that a rise from the current price of $89,833 to $150,000 would be a 67% increase, and 18.86% above the asset’s all-time high of $126,198.
For this to happen, Gromen claimed, “At the very least, that suggests there’s a whole lot of wood to chop for Bitcoin.”
According to him, there’s a possibility that Bitcoin “could easily” reach $60,000 instead of rising to $150k. He cited the notion of an “all-out trade war,” the U.S. becoming isolated from the rest of the world, or even a recession as scenarios that may prompt large Bitcoin sell-offs and depress institutional interest.
Gromen also phrased the question of what will happen to the cash Flow of those institutions, “Do they have to turn sellers? Are the treasury companies of this cycle the forced sellers as we saw around FTX in 2022?” He went on to say that if treasury companies were compelled to sell, the market could become overstocked.
According to Gromen, Bitcoin has entered a “bear market priced in gold,” signaling a larger capital rotation he claimed is similar to past trends in the 1930s, the early 1970s, and 2002. He pointed out that Bitcoin was performing poorly as investors turned to SAFE assets like gold, unlike traditional assets.
He said that although Bitcoin had the potential to act as a decentralized, trustless monetary system, speculative flows and wider market rotations continued to have a significant impact.
He also emphasized that Bitcoin’s decentralized and permissionless structure had given it a distinct position in a world where international trust was eroding. However, the majority of investors favored traditional assets, which prevented Bitcoin from reaching its full potential as a substitute for global reserves.
Gromen also disclosed that he had personally sold part of his Bitcoin. According to him, this strategy prioritized financial independence over potential Bitcoin profits, allowing him to pursue other high-potential assets in the years to come.
He stated that he preferred to retain a combination of assets, including gold, cash, and Bitcoin-like substitutes, to manage risk, despite Bitcoin’s long-term potential. According to Gromen, investors may prefer stability and optionality over pursuing high profits in an increasingly unpredictable world.
Institutional demand could boost the Bitcoin price in 2026
Participants in the cryptocurrency market often interpret increased institutional interest as a sign that prices may rise soon. “Institutional demand for Bitcoin remains strong,” Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, stated on Wednesday. Ju cited the 577,000 Bitcoins, or around $53 billion, that institutional funds have purchased in the last year. He repeated, “Still flowing in.”
In December of last year, asset management firm Grayscale predicted that Bitcoin WOULD reach new all-time highs in the first half of 2026, citing institutional demand and more transparent US regulations as the primary drivers. The firm pointed out that the rise will also coincide with the end of the supposed Bitcoin four-year cycle.
“We expect rising valuations in 2026 and the end of the so-called ‘four-year cycle,’ or the theory that crypto market direction follows a recurring four-year pattern. Bitcoin’s price will likely reach a new all-time high in the first half of the year,” Greyscle said in a statement.
Grayscale stated macroeconomic tailwinds and increased regulatory clarity will fuel the demand for rare assets like Bitcoin ($BTC) and ethereum ($ETH) this year. 2026 may be the year digital assets enter their institutional era.
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