Australia&#8217;s financial intelligence agency is cracking down on inactive crypto exchanges, warning they could be deregistered to prevent misuse by criminals. The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre — also known as AUSTRAC — said many crypto exchange providers are…

Inactive crypto exchanges face deregistration, Australia’s watchdog warns

In a live interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Monday, Peter Chung, Head of 
Research at quantitative trading firm Presto, reaffirmed his conviction that 
Bitcoin can reach $210,000 before the end of 2025, arguing that the asset is 
evolving into a macro-level refuge during moments of stress in the global 
financial system. Bitcoin Set To Go Parabolic &#8220;We have not changed our market 
outlook,” he began in the opening seconds of the interview. “Bitcoin target 
price remains $210,000, driven by institutional adoption and the global 
liquidity expansion.” He emphasized that the same framework underpins Presto’s 
valuation of Ether, adding: “For ETH our target price was based on the ETH-to- 
BTC ratio, which was 0.05. We still maintain that as well, reflecting the 
community’s efforts to address the value-leakage problem.” Related Reading: 
Bitcoin’s Net Taker Volume Turns Positive, New All-Time High Incoming? Chung 
pushed back on suggestions that the pullback earlier this year invalidates the 
model: “Granted, not everything turned out the way we expected so far this 
year—especially the macro outlook and the market reaction to it—but in 
hindsight it was actually a healthy correction that has paved the way for the 
further re-rating of Bitcoin as a mainstream asset.” Within Presto, he said, 
the dominant task this month has been “trying to figure out whether anything 
is broken in the market—be it confidence or some kind of global order—and how 
these assets are positioned in people’s portfolios.” Their conclusion: nothing 
systemic has fractured, leaving the secular drivers intact. The longest 
exchange came when the anchors asked why gold surged in April while Bitcoin 
initially lagged. Chung offered a granular taxonomy of Bitcoin’s behavior: 
“Bitcoin has two faces: digital gold and a risk-on asset. Most of the time 
Bitcoin behaves like a risk-on asset […]. But it’s during a crisis that 
Bitcoin behaves like gold […]. These moments are rare. They happen only when 
the market has doubts about the stability of the US-dollar-dominated financial 
system […] and that’s what we saw in the month of April.” Asked to identify 
the most statistically significant input behind the $210,000 figure, Chung 
pointed to what he called “global liquidity expansion,” a variable that Presto 
tracks through the balance-sheet trajectories of major central banks and large 
sovereign wealth funds. Although money-supply growth has slowed in the United 
States, it has re-accelerated in China and, more recently, in the euro area—a 
pattern that Presto believes will leak into crypto markets through cross- 
border flows. Related Reading: Bitcoin Trades At 40% Discount As ‘Triple Put’ 
Unfolds: Hedge Fund Founder He also underlined the role of institutional 
order-flow data, which the firm credits for spotting the 2024 rally. “The 
proportion of block trades above $10 million in Bitcoin perpetual futures,” he 
noted off-camera, “is back above 7 percent of total volume for the first time 
since November 2023.” Why $210,000 Is Not ‘Optimistic’ Although the round 
number draws headlines, Chung argued that $210,000 is conservative relative to 
historical adoption curves: “If you map Bitcoin’s network-effect data onto the 
monetisation path of the internet between 1994 and 2007, you arrive at levels 
far above $210,000. We chose that figure precisely because it balances tail- 
risk and liquidity constraints. It is not a moon-shot; it is the median 
outcome in our distribution.” Still, he conceded that the path is unlikely to 
be linear: “Our mission is not to be prophets of the exact week or month; our 
mission is to determine whether anything in the structural thesis—scarcity, 
decentralisation, adoption—has broken. So far, nothing is broken.” The anchors 
pressed him on what would force a downward revision. Chung named two red 
lines: A lasting collapse in real global M2, which would strangle risk capital 
and suppress the liquidity premium that pushes scarce digital assets higher, 
and a fatal consensus bug or governance failure inside the Bitcoin network—an 
event he stressed has “never happened in fifteen years” but that any 
quantitative risk model must include. Short of those, Presto sees the April 
correction as a “mid-cycle purge” that flushed overheated leverage ahead of 
the next leg. “Bitcoin is already trying to catch up,” Chung said, pointing to 
the rally off the mid-April lows. Whether that momentum propels the asset all 
the way to six-figure territory by New Year’s Eve will, in his words, “depend 
on whether investors choose to price geopolitical insurance now or after the 
next tremor.” At press time, BTC traded at $94,983. Featured image from 
YouTube, chart from TradingView.com

Bitcoin To Explode To $210,000 This Year, Says Quant Powerhouse Presto

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