Bitwise raises its 2036 bitcoin forecast to $1.6 million: bear, base and bull cases

Crypto asset manager Bitwise has lifted its 10-year bitcoin forecast to $1.6 million by 2036, from $1.3 million a year ago, implying a 34.3% compound annual return. The figure comes from Bitwise's 2027 Bitcoin Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, published on Wednesday, Oct. 28, The Block reports. This is Bitwise's projection, not ours, and long-range forecasts like it are often wrong.

How Bitwise gets to $1.6 million

Bitwise sizes the markets bitcoin could compete in and assigns it a share of each. It kept last year's market-share assumptions but raised two inputs:

• the global store-of-value market in 2036, from $91 trillion to $110 trillion;
• the institutional investment market, from $216 trillion to $303 trillion.

The base case assumes bitcoin takes 25% of store-of-value demand and 1% of institutional assets. Citing Boston Consulting Group estimates of about $147 trillion in institutional assets, Bitwise says a 1% to 5% allocation would mean $1.5 trillion to $7.4 trillion of demand, against roughly $14 billion of new coins mined each year. About 20.1 million BTC, or 95.7% of the 21 million cap, is already in circulation.

Compared with Wall Street's numbers

Bitwise says the 34.3% figure is about five times the 6.7% average forecast for US stocks, and three times the 10.8% for private equity, based on projections from JPMorgan, PGIM, BlackRock and Vanguard. JPMorgan's own model is far more cautious: it gives bitcoin a 10% annual return over 10 to 15 years with 55% volatility.

Bitwise also cut its volatility estimate to an average of 27.8% for the decade, from 32.9% last year. It points to the roughly 53% drop from the October 2025 high above $126,000, which is shallower than the 86%, 84% and 77% falls after the 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks.

"We are more bullish on bitcoin today than we were last year," CIO Matt Hougan said, while admitting that recent safe-haven demand has gone mostly to gold and that ETF buying has slowed. Bitcoin trades near $80,400, up about 40% from its June low around $58,000.

What to take from it

Asset managers that sell bitcoin funds have a reason to publish optimistic models, and Bitwise runs several. Treat the range between $130,686 and $3.67 million as a sign of how uncertain this is. If you are weighing exposure, our guide to bitcoin ETFs vs buying bitcoin compares the two routes, and what bitcoin is covers the basics.