Zhu Fa, co-founder of crypto mining pool Poolin, has made a bullish statement on Bitcoin’s price. In a WeChat group he predicted that Bitcoin would surge to new highs 10-20 times the level it reached in the previous bull run.

Bitcoin is now in its longest ever bear market, having crashed from record highs near $20,000 to recent lows touching $3,000.

Poolin is the operator of the third-largest mining pool according to BTC.com, with a current hashrate of 5.9 EH/s (out of a total of 44 EH/s) and a network share of 13.4%.

To give an idea of scale, an S9 Antminer has a hashrate of 13.5TH/s, so Poolin has the equivalent of around half a million ASIC miners in its pool.

The world’s largest, and second largest pools – BTC.com and Antpool – are both operated by Bitmain in China. In fact, it’s estimated that over 80% of mining pools are operating in China due to cheap electricity, and rumors that Chinese power companies encourage the use of excess energy for Bitcoin mining.

According to 8BTC, Zhu Fa posted his predictions on the instant messaging platform WeChat on the 10th February, responding to another bitcoin billionaire Zhao Dong’s statement that bitcoin right now is “the cheapest”.

Fa said that “Bitcoin price will be in the range of 500,000 yuan – 5,000,000 yuan ($74K-$740K) in the next round of bull run.”

However, he acknowleged the crypto winter saying: “likes and comments on crypto posts in the community keep going low these days, it now feels more like a bear market”.

The question is, when does the bear market finish and the next bull run begin?