Bitcoin’s expanding institutional adoption may provide the “structural” inflows necessary to surpass gold’s market capitalization and push its price beyond $1 million by 2029, according to Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch.

“Our in-house prediction is $1 million by 2029. So that Bitcoin will match gold’s market cap and total addressable market by 2029,” he told Cointelegraph during the Chain Reaction daily X spaces show on April 30.

Corporations are coming for your bitcoin (feat. André Dragosch, Head of Research at Bitwise) #CHAINREACTION https://t.co/5F3cRWBHzq

— Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) April 30, 2025

Gold is currently the world’s largest asset, valued at over $21.7 trillion. In comparison, Bitcoin’s market capitalization sits at $1.9 trillion, making it the seventh-largest asset globally, according to CompaniesMarketCap data.

Top 10 global assets by market capitalization. Source: CompaniesMarketCap

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For the 2025 market cycle, Bitcoin may surpass $200,000 in the “base case” and $500,000 with more governmental adoption, Dragosch said.

“But once you see sovereign bias like the US government stepping in, all this will change to $500,000.”

“So the base case is $200,000, conditional on the US government not stepping in. If they step in, it will move closer toward $500,000,” said Dragosch, referring to the US government’s plan to potentially make direct Bitcoin acquisitions through “budget-neutral” strategies.

The US is looking at “many creative ways” to fund its Bitcoin investments, including from tariff revenue and by reevaluating the US Treasury’s gold certificates, creating a paper surplus to fund the BTC reserve without selling gold, Bo Hines of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets said in an interview on April 14.

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“Structural” ETF inflows, institutional adoption prolong Bitcoin cycle

The US-based spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have surpassed all expectations during their first year of trading, exceeding record trading volumes as BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF became the fastest-growing ETF in history.

The first year is usually the “slowest” for ETFs, Dragosch said, highlighting the launch of the gold ETF:

“That alone implies that in the second and third year, we will see growing inflows. In terms of the four four-year cycle, implies that, this cycle will be prolonged by these structural inflows.”

The Bitcoin cycle may also be prolonged when US wirehouses start gaining exposure to Bitcoin and ETFs.

“In the US, the major distribution channels go via Wirehouses, which are essentially the big banks like Merrill Lynch or Morgan Stanley. […] Not even half of these wirehouses have opened up their distribution channels to US Bitcoin ETFs,” the analyst said.

Adoption from US wirehouses may bring a “huge amount of capital,” since these control over $10 trillion worth of customer assets, Dragosch added.

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