Bitwise Asset Management has published its 2025 Bitcoin Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, setting three 2035 price targets that range from cautious to bold: a bear case of $88,005, a base case of $1,306,740, and a bull case of $2,976,927 per BTC. The firm released the report on August 21, 2025, and anchors the outlook to a total addressable market (TAM) model rather than a single narrative.
Scenarios at a glance
- Bear: $88,005
- Base: $1,306,740
- Bull: $2,976,927
What Bitwise Is Modeling
Instead of forecasting price from past cycles, Bitwise sizes the markets bitcoin could penetrate and assigns adoption rates to each by 2035. The table driving the targets applies penetration assumptions to seven buckets, including stores of value, institutional portfolios, emerging-market currencies, offshore wealth, national reserves, U.S. corporate treasuries, and remittances. In the base case, bitcoin captures 25% of the store-of-value segment, a key swing factor in the model.
To translate market share into price, Bitwise uses bitcoin’s fixed long-term supply of 21 million coins. The team deliberately assumes the full eventual supply when converting TAM to price, calling this conservative given both lost coins and the likelihood that not all supply will be circulating by 2035.
Why the Base Case Looks Plausible (According to Bitwise)
Bitwise’s base case implies a 10-year compound annual growth rate of 28.3% through 2035. The firm pairs that with long-run volatility near 33% and low correlations to major asset classes. In their view, bitcoin can still diversify portfolios even as the asset matures and volatility trends lower than its history. Think of a pension or endowment moving just 1–2% of a $100 billion portfolio—those flows can matter in a market with inelastic supply.
The thesis rests on three forces colliding: expanding institutional adoption, persistent demand for inflation hedges, and bitcoin’s capped issuance. That supply-demand setup is the heart of the argument, and it’s the same logic early media coverage highlighted when summarizing the report’s $1.3 million base-case target.
What Could Change the Outcome
Bitwise flags the obvious wild cards: regulation, politics, and macro conditions. Actual allocation trends from pensions, advisors, and corporates will either validate or undercut the TAM shares. Meanwhile, if correlations drift higher than expected or volatility stays stubbornly elevated, portfolio math could cool enthusiasm. As Bitwise notes, modeling bitcoin is new and imperfect, so they frame bear, base, and bull paths rather than a single point forecast.
Key takeaways for investors and readers:
- The model depends heavily on store-of-value adoption; even small shifts in that assumption move the price targets.
- Using full eventual supply keeps estimates conservative relative to real circulating coins.
- A 28.3% base-case CAGR is aggressive versus most traditional assets, but Bitwise argues correlations remain low enough to support a diversification role.
Ultimately, this is a roadmap, not a guarantee. The next decade’s direction will hinge on how quickly institutions allocate, how stable the rules stay, and whether the macro backdrop keeps favoring scarce, non-sovereign assets.
