Matt Hougan (맷 호건), chief investment officer at Bitwise, laid out a scenario in which bitcoin could top $1 million over the long term.

The Crypto Basic, a blockchain outlet, reported on Sunday that Hougan stressed in a recent interview that he views the outlook as a "conservative scenario". The key assumption is that bitcoin can establish itself as digital gold and raise its share of the global store-of-value market.

Hougan first put the size of the store-of-value market at about $40 trillion. He described gold at about $38 trillion and bitcoin at about $1.4 trillion. He also presented a simple calculation, saying bitcoin currently accounts for about 4 to 5 percent of the market and that this lines up with a current price around $70,000.

He said it is not enough to view such comparisons as static numbers. He went on to explain that the store-of-value market was about $2.5 trillion in 2004, when gold spot exchange-traded funds were introduced, and has grown at an average annual rate of about 12.5 percent since then. If that trend continues through 2035, bitcoin could reach $1 million even if it secures only a 15 percent market share, he said. He added a scenario in which it could approach $2 million if the share rises to 30 percent.

Hougan drew a line, saying the outlook should be read from the perspective of long-term returns rather than a short-term surge. He said it does not assume extreme adoption expansion or abnormal market growth, and mentioned that "bitcoin could deliver returns of nearly 20 times over 10 years". He also played down expectations for a sharp rise over a short period, and cited decentralised finance, or DeFi, projects as an area with greater potential for high short-term returns.

He also cited changes in market structure. He said the United States previously had no bitcoin spot ETFs, but such products have now become one of the fastest-growing ETFs. He pointed to cases in which the Harvard endowment and an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund secured bitcoin exposure to explain expanding institutional participation. He also said that as bitcoin's long-term volatility declines, professional investors are increasingly reviewing allocation levels closer to 5 percent, up from around 1 percent in the past.

Hougan also flagged risks. If the growth rate of the store-of-value market slows or bitcoin fails to raise its share enough, upside could be limited, he said. Even so, he said demand for alternative assets could rise as global debt increases and concerns about currency debasement grow, and he saw bitcoin's position as a store-of-value asset becoming more prominent in such an environment.