VTB Bank’s bullish Bitcoin forecast clashes with market scepticism amid rising regulatory focus in Russia
VTB Bank predicts Bitcoin could reach $250,000 in the medium term, but market traders remain unconvinced amid low liquidity and uncertain regulatory developments in Russia.
VTB Bank predicts Bitcoin could reach $250,000 in the medium term, but market traders remain unconvinced amid low liquidity and uncertain regulatory developments in Russia.
VTB Bank, Russia’s second-largest state-owned lender, has put Bitcoin on a path to $250,000 in the medium term, a bullish call that sits awkwardly beside a market that is still pricing a far smaller chance of a rapid surge. TASS reported that the bank’s investment adviser, Artyom Markin, pointed to Bitcoin’s limited supply and the fact that most of the eventual total has already been mined as reasons to expect further gains.
Yet traders on Polymarket remain unconvinced. The contract asking whether Bitcoin will reach $200,000 by 31 December 2026 has stayed around 4.9% YES, according to the market page, and CryptoBriefing said that level has not budged over the past week. The pricing suggests that, at least for now, the market is treating VTB’s forecast as more ambitious than imminent.
That scepticism is reinforced by the thinness of the market itself. CryptoBriefing said daily volume is only about $505 in USDC, while a relatively small amount of capital can still move the price materially, making the contract vulnerable to outsized trades. Even so, the market has not reacted to the Russian bank’s forecast or to the broader debate around crypto policy.
The timing is notable because the forecast has landed as a crypto bill advances through Russia’s State Duma, but there is little sign that traders are using that development to reprice the market. Polymarket’s own event page shows the contract settled around a 5% implied chance, with the outcome tied to Bitcoin’s price on Binance. That gap between institutional rhetoric and prediction-market pricing reflects a wider split in the market: while some forecasters, including Fundstrat’s Tom Lee, have pointed to $200,000 to $250,000 by the end of 2026, others have projected lower levels, underscoring how uncertain the path to that range remains.
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Source: Noah Wire Services