JPMorgan: BTC target price remains at $170,000, Strategy positions and January index are key variables

[BlockBeats] This wave of BTC has pulled back from $120,000 to $82,000, but the folks at JPMorgan remain calm. Their “volatility-adjusted model” is still sticking to a price target of $170,000—with a time window of the next six months to a year.

The key is to watch the company, Strategy. Right now, their enterprise value to holdings value ratio (mNAV) is stuck at 1.13, and Wall Street is watching it closely. If this ratio drops below 1.0, the market will start worrying about a “forced sell-off” scenario. Fortunately, things are still relatively safe for now, and they have $1.4 billion in cash reserves on the books, so there’s no urgent need to sell at a loss.

What’s interesting is the MSCI index decision on January 15. JPMorgan believes this is an “asymmetric bet”: if they get kicked out of the index, the big drop in October has already priced in the bad news. But if there’s any positive news, the stock price could take off directly.

From a technical perspective, BTC’s mining cost line has dropped from $94,000 to $90,000—recently, both hashrate and difficulty have been declining. Analysts warn that if the price stays below the cost line for an extended period, it could trigger a chain reaction: marginal miners can’t hold on → exit → difficulty drops further → costs continue to fall. This playbook was seen in 2018.

There is, however, a positive signal: the deleveraging of perpetual contracts that started in October is almost complete. At least that part of the bubble has been squeezed out of the market.