Tom Lee Predicted $250K Bitcoin by End of 2025. It Closed at $87,500. Now He's Saying the Same Thing for 2026.

Fundstrat's Tom Lee went on Wealthion in late 2024 with supreme confidence: Bitcoin was about to 3x thanks to the halving cycle, a "pro-Bitcoin" incoming U.S. government, and inevitable institutional adoption. He declared it "highly probable" we'd see $250K by year end.

Bitcoin closed 2025 at $87,500. Not even close to halfway there.

The best part? On January 8, 2026, Lee dusted off the exact same prediction for 2026. Same number. Same conviction. Same vibes. He's essentially running the investment equivalent of "new year, new me" except it's "new year, same wrong prediction."

To be fair to Tom Lee, he's been right about Bitcoin over longer timeframes. But calling specific price targets with this level of confidence is the financial equivalent of a weather forecaster promising sunny skies while standing in a hurricane. The halving happened. The pro-Bitcoin government arrived. Institutional adoption continued. Bitcoin still didn't sniff $250K.

Perhaps the real lesson here isn't that Tom Lee is bad at predictions—it's that confidently predicting crypto prices is bad at being a reasonable activity.