Bitwise’s Ryan Rasmussen Says Bitcoin Could Top $1 Million by 2030 as Institutional Inflows Grow

Bitwise Asset Management, through Head of Research Ryan Rasmussen, has articulated an optimistic long-term thesis for Bitcoin pricing, projecting the asset could trade at $1 million within a decade while potentially establishing new record highs during 2026. The timing of this forecast coincides with a pivotal regulatory shift: institutional advisors managing the majority of U.S. institutional capital were prohibited from purchasing Bitcoin ETFs until 2026. This regulatory constraint removal represents a structural catalyst for institutional inflows that Bitwise identifies as a primary driver of near-term price appreciation.

Bitwise's internal research quantifies this opportunity through a recommended 5% allocation to Bitcoin for institutional portfolios, indicating substantial unmet demand from fiduciaries previously barred from direct crypto exposure. This allocation framework suggests that the addressable market for institutional Bitcoin ownership has only begun to materialize. The firm's research indicates that Bitcoin's current trading level around $65,000 leaves considerable room for appreciation toward the $1 million target, though Rasmussen emphasizes that achieving this level will require longer timeframes than market participants typically project.

The $1 million price target carries important nuance in Bitwise's framing. Rather than treating this as an aggressive outlier, the firm characterizes it as potentially a "baseline" or "starting point" contingent on Bitcoin's adoption as a genuine global currency and store of value. This conditionality distinguishes the forecast from pure speculation—the achievement of structural use-case expansion would be required to justify valuations beyond $1 million. Bitwise additionally positions geopolitical instability and currency devaluation concerns as tailwinds for Bitcoin adoption, arguing that global uncertainty increases demand for assets perceived as immune to sovereign policy risk.

Beyond Bitcoin price appreciation, Bitwise's 2026 outlook extends to adjacent crypto markets, particularly stablecoins. The firm projects the stablecoin market will expand dramatically from its current $300 billion scale to between $3 trillion and $5 trillion, a 10–17x expansion. Within this thesis, Bitwise identifies Circle as a mispriced opportunity, suggesting that stablecoin infrastructure providers represent undervalued plays on the broader institutionalization of digital currency markets.

Rasmussen's positioning reflects Bitwise's broader conviction that 2026 represents a critical inflection point for crypto market structure and institutional participation, with regulatory constraints removal acting as a catalyst for capital deployment at historically unprecedented scales.