Bitcoin’s Run Back to $100K — And the $53 PayPal Sleeper Nobody Is Talking About.

By RBC Business

Everybody wants to find the next investment before everybody else finds it.

Right now, Bitcoin isn’t exactly a secret. But its road back to $100,000 is getting interesting again. Bitcoin has climbed back into the mid-$80,000s after a brutal first half of 2026. More importantly, institutional money appears interested again. Citigroup just raised its 12-month Bitcoin target from $82,000 to $113,000, citing stronger crypto activity, improving macro conditions and renewed ETF inflows.

Translation: Wall Street isn’t calling Bitcoin dead anymore.

Of course, Citi having a $113K target doesn’t mean Bitcoin magically goes there. Crypto remains ridiculously volatile, and another 20% drop would surprise approximately nobody who’s owned Bitcoin longer than a semester.

But Bitcoin isn’t the only interesting trade.

Meet the sleeper: PayPal.

PYPL is trading around the low-$50s. That’s almost difficult to believe when you remember this stock traded above $300 in 2021.

Here’s where college-level economics meets common sense: a stock being down 80% doesn’t automatically make it cheap.

Sometimes the market is correctly telling you a company has problems. PayPal certainly has them. Competition is vicious. Apple Pay is everywhere. Stripe is powerful. Growth isn’t what investors once imagined.

But PayPal also isn’t some Reddit penny stock operating out of somebody’s basement.

The company reported $8.68 billion in Q2 2026 revenue, while adjusted earnings reached $1.38 per share. Its next earnings report is scheduled for October 27.

That creates an interesting risk/reward equation.

At roughly $53, PayPal doesn’t need to return anywhere near $300 for the investment to work. If the market eventually rerated PYPL to $75, that’s roughly 42% upside. At $100, you’re talking about approximately 89%.

And that’s why these two investments interest us for completely different reasons.

If we were putting fresh money to work today, I wouldn’t YOLO the tuition payment into either one. I’d build positions gradually—buy some now, keep cash available and add on meaningful weakness.

Because investing isn’t about proving you called the exact bottom - it’s about recognizing when the price might be more interesting than the

narrative.

Bitcoin wants $100,000 back.

PayPal just needs investors to remember it’s still PayPal. Sometimes the crowded trade works.

Sometimes the forgotten one works better.

See you at the end of Q4