According to Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood, the price of Bitcoin (BTC -2.48%) could soar to as high as $1.5 million by 2030. Given Bitcoin's current price of just under $50,000, that would represent a nearly 3,000% gain within a remarkably short period.
At first glance, this $1.5 million price target might strike you as outlandish. After all, in its entire 15-year history, Bitcoin has only reached a high of $69,000 -- and that was during the extremely frothy and speculative crypto bull market of 2020-2021. But, as Wood points out, two key catalysts could lead to Bitcoin skyrocketing in value. Let's take a closer look.
The new Bitcoin ETF
The obvious starting point is the new spot Bitcoin ETF product. Ark Invest is one of the investment firms that received approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF, so it's no surprise that Wood is extremely bullish on what this means for the long-term growth of Bitcoin. As she recently pointed out on CNBC, the SEC just gave the "green light" for both Wall Street and Main Street to invest in Bitcoin.
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Considering that institutional investors have trillions of dollars in assets under management, it won't take a lot to move the needle. For example, if institutional investors such as pension funds and endowment funds decide to allocate just 1% of their portfolios to Bitcoin, the ramifications could be enormous. It could result in billions of dollars flowing into Bitcoin.
At the same time, wealth managers and financial planners could start advising their clients to consider allocating a portion of their portfolios to Bitcoin. That, too, could lead to an influx of new money flowing into Bitcoin. Most likely, this would occur over a longer period, and probably won't have as dramatic an effect as, say, BlackRock Inc. (BLK 0.69%) flipping the switch on $10 trillion in assets under management.
Bitcoin use cases
Moreover, Bitcoin has an expanding array of use cases that make it valuable. Remember -- Bitcoin is not just a financial asset, it's also a technological innovation based on blockchain technology. The most obvious use case right now is acting as a store of value. Many crypto investors refer to Bitcoin as "digital gold" precisely because it appears to be a long-term store of value, similar to physical gold.
But there are a handful of other use cases for Bitcoin that you might not have considered. In Ark Invest's "Big Ideas 2023" report, the investment firm lays out eight different use cases for Bitcoin. For each of these use cases, the firm applies several different projections and estimates for just how big the market opportunity might become.
For example, the base case scenario in the Ark Invest report is for institutional investors to allocate 1% of their portfolios to Bitcoin. But the bull case scenario calls for institutional investors to allocate as much as 6.5% of their portfolios to Bitcoin. The more that institutional investors buy (literally) into the idea of Bitcoin, the higher Bitcoin could go in the medium to long term.
What could possibly go wrong?
Based on the above, Bitcoin would seem to be unstoppable. No wonder Cathie Wood recently doubled down on her $1.5 million price estimate for Bitcoin. But just keep in mind that Bitcoin is rarely predictable and often highly volatile. So while the long-term macro trend might be for Bitcoin to soar in value, there is sure to be plenty of turbulence along the way.
One of the primary risks to Bitcoin has always been regulatory risk. Simply stated, the SEC could decide to pull the plug on Bitcoin at any moment. The large-scale approval of so many different spot Bitcoin ETF products at one time would appear to signal that the SEC is finally OK with the idea of investors buying Bitcoin. But what if the new ETFs perform erratically, or there are major glitches in how Bitcoin trades in the crypto market as a result of so much new money entering the market so quickly?
That being said, I agree with Wood that a "building block" model for Bitcoin valuation -- in which all the use case projections for Bitcoin are summed up and then aggregated -- makes a lot of sense. And I agree that spot Bitcoin ETF approval is almost certain to lead to billions of new dollars flowing into Bitcoin. The big question, though, is just how long it will take Bitcoin to reach that mythical $1 million price target.
