Bitwise: Why Bitcoin Could Reach $1.6 Million in Ten Years?

Written by Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise

Compiled by Chopper, Foresight News

For the past few weeks, I have been working with our head of research, Ryan Rasmussen, to update Bitwise's annual “Bitcoin Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions” report. This report uses the latest data on Bitcoin and the macroeconomy to forecast Bitcoin's future returns, volatility, and correlations with other assets, aiming to help asset allocators understand how to incorporate Bitcoin into their portfolios.

Honestly, when I started updating this report, I felt uneasy and did not know what the final conclusion would be. When we released the first version last year, Bitcoin surged past its all-time high of $125,000, market sentiment was optimistic, and the macro environment was relatively benign. At the time, we forecast that Bitcoin would rise to $1.3 million by 2035.

Since then, Bitcoin has had a difficult year. From October 2025 to June 2026, its maximum drawdown exceeded 50%, with the price falling below $59,000. Market sentiment hit rock bottom, and many media outlets again declared Bitcoin “dead”. Meanwhile, the macro environment continued to deteriorate: conflict in the Middle East, sticky inflation, rising interest rates, and growing concerns about an AI bubble.

I originally worried that the data would force us to lower expectations, cutting the ten-year price target from $1.3 million to $1 million or even lower. If that happened, the media would certainly make a big deal of it.

But the calculations delivered a very different answer.

We used the exact same model as last year and only updated the input data. The ten-year price target was raised from $1.3 million to $1.6 million. The corresponding compound annual growth rate forecast also increased from 28.3% to 34.3%.

How did we arrive at this price target?

The core logic is actually simple: for long-term forecasts, we look at only two key variables. First, the size of the target market; second, the share of that market Bitcoin can capture. After reviewing the data, we found that both indicators performed exceptionally well.

On the one hand, the potential market size expanded significantly. As investors grow increasingly concerned about continued fiat depreciation and persistently high inflation, the expected size of the store-of-value market over the next decade increased from $91 trillion to $110 trillion. The expected ten-year size of the institutional investment market expanded from $216 trillion to $303 trillion. Other markets Bitcoin can enter, including offshore wealth and emerging-market currencies, also grew.

Bitcoin's expected annual growth rate is 34.3%, with a price target of $1.6 million in 2036. Data source: Bitwise Asset Management; underlying data from Bloomberg, the International Monetary Fund, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Boston Consulting Group, the World Gold Council, the Federal Reserve Board, and the EU Tax Observatory.

This is the first part of the calculation. All else being equal, if Bitcoin successfully establishes itself in the store-of-value market, the larger the addressable market, the higher the potential price ceiling.

At the same time, we are more confident that Bitcoin can capture a meaningful share of that market, supported by several factors: wealth-management platforms such as Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch continue to expand their Bitcoin exposure rather than exit; central banks and sovereign wealth funds around the world are gradually moving closer rather than pulling back; and Bitcoin's cyclical volatility continues to narrow.

Out of conservatism, we kept our market-share assumptions for each segment unchanged from last year's report. The larger addressable market, combined with unchanged share assumptions, ultimately raised the price target.

Counterarguments and Responses

Of course, skeptics raise several concerns: most flows into store-of-value assets currently go to gold rather than Bitcoin. The past year's market performance also reaffirmed that Bitcoin is prone to large drawdowns, and inflows into Bitcoin ETFs have slowed.

These concerns are valid. But we also see the correlation between Bitcoin and gold continuing to rise. This cycle's drawdown from the high is 53%, which is much milder than in previous bear markets; even with slower ETF inflows, institutions continued adding exposure during this downturn. Achieving this much progress in such a difficult year makes me confident about Bitcoin's performance when conditions improve. It is worth remembering that Bitcoin's share of the store-of-value market has risen from less than 1% a decade ago to more than 5% today.

If you have 15 minutes, we recommend reading the full report. It will remind us that although the past year was turbulent, it was actually a highly rewarding year for Bitcoin.

I believe the next decade will be even more exciting.

Source: TechFlow