Now that Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) has crossed the $100,000 mark, it’s only natural to ask: Just how much higher can it really go? After all, Bitcoin is up more than 30,000% over the past decade, and is now a $2 trillion asset. Long-term investors may find it hard to envision Bitcoin replicating its past decade’s performance.
The good news is that Bitcoin is likely nowhere close to hitting its true ceiling. According to Larry Fink, CEO of asset management giant BlackRock, Bitcoin could eventually soar as high as $700,000. Based on today’s prices, that would represent a nearly 600% return on investment.
In an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Fink outlined a potential scenario that could send Bitcoin on a path to $700,000. From his perspective, it all starts with institutional adoption of Bitcoin. And the best way to measure this level of adoption is by tracking the allocation that institutional investors are willing to make to Bitcoin in their own portfolios.
Right now, we’re at a point where allocating even 1% of a portfolio to Bitcoin is considered risky, especially if you’re a pension fund, endowment fund, or other large institutional investor. In order for Bitcoin to reach its true potential, that percentage must become considerably higher. As Fink sees it, it may take an allocation of 5% to really get meaningful results with Bitcoin.
That 5% figure coincides with a similar forecast made by Cathie Wood of Ark Invest. As part of her Bitcoin valuation model, she considered a number of different scenarios for institutional adoption. In the bear case scenario, institutional adoption stays at the 1% level. But in a bull case scenario, institutional adoption moves as high as 6.5%. If that happens, says Wood, Bitcoin could actually reach a price of $1 million by the year 2030.
For many retail investors, the decision to invest in Bitcoin is based on a belief that its ultimate upside potential is uncapped. They’ve seen how Bitcoin has the potential to deliver 10x, 100x, and even 1000x returns over a remarkably short period, and they’re willing to believe that Bitcoin will continue to deliver these same returns over the foreseeable future.
However, for institutional investors, there is an entirely different reason to invest in Bitcoin. Instead of being motivated by greed, they are motivated by fear. They are looking for ways to diversify away risk, and to protect themselves from economic uncertainty. They view Bitcoin as a form of “digital gold” that can still perform well, even if the rest of the global economy is in tatters.
