Trillions in institutional money to flow into bitcoin, says Bitwise's Matt Hougan

Hougan's $1.3 million BTC price target by 2035 rests on bitcoin taking a 25% share of an expanding store-of-value market. Gold’s market capitalization has risen from about $2 trillion when gold ETFs launched in 2004 to roughly $30 trillion today, he said. If the market keeps expanding at its historical 13% annual pace for another decade, bitcoin reaching a quarter of it would put each coin at $1.3 million.

“When people value bitcoin, they often talk about it as competing with gold for the ‘store of value’ market. They say something like: Gold is a $30 trillion asset. If bitcoin can take 50% of the market, each bitcoin will be worth $715,000,” he said.

“Institutions have most of the money in the world,” Hougan said. “Crypto grew up in retail, which took it from $0 to $2 trillion. But if it wants to get from $2 trillion to $20 trillion, it’s going to be institutional capital that leads the way.”

Strategy has been one of the biggest buyers of bitcoin for years, becoming the world’s largest corporate holder of BTC with 842,138 BTC, even after some modest recent sales. But Hougan believes it will no longer be bitcoin’s primary driver of demand.