Now that Bitcoin (BTC -3.20%) has hit the $100,000 price level, the future looks very bright indeed. Some forecasts now call for Bitcoin to hit a target price of $1 million within the next decade.
But it may not take a full decade for Bitcoin to hit the $1 million mark. At the recent Bitcoin 2025 conference in Las Vegas, Arthur Hayes, the billionaire co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, outlined a potential scenario by which Bitcoin could hit a price of $1 million as early as 2028. So is he right?
Bitcoin valuation models
There are a number of different ways to come up with a price of $1 million for Bitcoin. One popular approach is to look at current Bitcoin adoption rates around the world and then extrapolate how fast Bitcoin could grow over the next decade. The more use cases you can find for Bitcoin, and the faster that Bitcoin grows, the higher the price target becomes. That's how Cathie Wood of Ark Invest came up with her original $1 million price target for Bitcoin.
Or, you could choose to compare Bitcoin to a specific asset and then assume that the valuation gap between Bitcoin and that asset will narrow over time. Right now, the asset that everyone is using for comparison is physical gold, which has an approximate market valuation of $20 trillion. If Bitcoin grows from a $2 trillion asset into a $20 trillion asset, that would imply a 10x return on investment. Given Bitcoin's current price of $100,000, that leads to a future price target of $1 million.
Image source: Getty Images.
But there's a third way to value Bitcoin, and it focuses on how specific government fiscal and monetary policies can impact the crypto market. This is the approach that Hayes uses in his Bitcoin 2025 presentation. He thinks that the U.S. government could inject nearly $9 trillion of liquidity into the economy over the next three years.
That's significantly more than the $4 trillion that the U.S. government injected into the economy during the COVID pandemic. When that happened in 2020 and 2021, the price of Bitcoin soared from $7,000 to $70,000 for a 10x return on investment. Could that happen again? If the same scenario repeats, then Bitcoin might soar from $100,000 to $1 million.
The path to $1 million
So why would the U.S. government want to inject $9 trillion into the economy? Well, it comes down to the difficult macroeconomic problems facing the U.S. government. There are massive trade deficits with trading partners around the world. There are massive fiscal deficits, with no end in sight to government spending. And there are warning signs of recession and inflation everywhere.
In many ways, 2025 has been a crash course study on how hard it is to solve those problems. For example, if you try to bring down government spending with DOGE cost-cutting programs, you risk a public backlash. If you try to bring down trade deficits using tariffs, you face a global investor backlash.
In the scenario envisioned by Hayes, the U.S. government is going to find it harder and harder to find buyers for its debt. It can't offer higher interest rates on that debt to attract buyers because the cost of debt service is already staggeringly high. So it will have to resort to more and more creative measures. One of these, says Hayes, is a potential change to how banks can buy U.S. government debt. This could lead to a "bank bond-buying bonanza."
At the same time, if tariffs lead to economic pain for everyday Americans, then the U.S. government will be forced to do something -- anything! -- to reduce some of this pain. Once mid-term elections roll around in 2026, the pressure will intensify. As longtime Bitcoin investors will tell you, this always leads to the same solution: printing more money.
What happens between now and 2028?
Many people assume that the path to $1 million for Bitcoin is paved with all of the new pro-crypto policies being rolled out by the Trump administration. They assume that the creation of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will lead to significant government buying of Bitcoin, thereby pushing up its price over time. They assume that new crypto legislation, combined with a hands-off approach to crypto regulation, will be enough to juice the price of Bitcoin.
However, if Bitcoin is going to hit $1 million during the Trump presidency, it will likely require quite a bit of economic pain along the way. It might even require global investors to lose faith in the U.S. economy. All of this is very bad for America, of course. But, at the same time, it could be very good for Bitcoin if it leads to new investor inflows into crypto.
So be careful what you wish for. Bitcoin may reach $1 million, but it won't happen the way you think.
