Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao's BTC/USD price prediction comes true

Zhao may have had one of the closest predictions of all time, predicting more than four years ago that the current sharp drop from six-digits to around $85,000 would be called a crash.

Many people have tried to predict the future price of Bitcoin BTC/USD over the years, including Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao.

Zhao may have had one of the closest predictions of all time, predicting more than four years ago that the current sharp drop from six-digits to around $85,000 would be called a crash.

What Happened: Bitcoin soared to new highs after the 2024 presidential election, topping the $75,000 level.

Months later in January, Bitcoin hit another all-time high of $109,114.88 on Jan. 20, near the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Since that time, Bitcoin has fallen in value and is now trading under the $85,000 level.

While many reports cite the sharp crash in Bitcoin's valuation, it's likely important to remember that Bitcoin is still trading higher than levels seen four months ago before the 2024 election.

Binance founder and former CEO Zhao, best known to many as CZ, took to social media platform X to express his thoughts on the drop in Bitcoin's value in recent months.

"In this bloodbath today, I see a lot of people referring to this tweet," CZ said, sharing a tweet he made on Dec. 17, 2020.

CZ said that he had no visibility into the future at the time, but encouraged investors to zoom out on the Bitcoin chart to see the strong gains over the past year.

The Dec. 17, 2020 tweet was:

"Waiting for the new headline: #Bitcoin ‘CRASHES’ from $101,000 to $85,000. Save the tweet."

CZ's prediction has come true in recent months. Here's a look back at how much investors could have made following along with his prediction.

Investing $1,000 in Bitcoin: On Dec. 17, 2020, Bitcoin traded between $21,234.68 and $23,642.66. An investor could have purchased 0.0423 Bitcoin at the day's highest price with a $1,000 investment.

Today that $1,000 investment would be worth $3,534.43, based on a price of $83,556.33 for Bitcoin at the time of writing. This represents a hypothetical gain of 253.4% over the past four plus years.

The $1,000 investment would have been worth $4,615.56 and up 361.6% at Bitcoin's all-time high price of $109,114.88 last month.

For comparison, the same $1,000 invested in the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 Index, could have returned far less for investors.

A $1,000 investment in that ETF on Dec. 17, 2020, could have bought 2.68 SPY shares and would be worth $1,568.15 today, up 56.8%.

The comments from Zhao are a reminder that Bitcoin will not go up in a straight line and will have periods of dips. History has shown that Bitcoin has outperformed many stocks and asset types over one-year, five-year and longer periods.