Will Bitcoin (BTC) Hit $1.5 Million by 2030? Ark Invest Founder Cathie Wood Predicts It Will

Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood recently reiterated her prediction that Bitcoin's (BTC 0.23%) price could reach $1.5 million by 2030.

Cathie Wood, the founder of investment firm Ark Invest, is known for her bold predictions, and she recently made another one: Bitcoin's (BTC 0.23%) price could hit $1.5 million by 2030.

The implication of this price target is that the world's favorite cryptocurrency could be poised for a staggering 1,500% surge from its current price of $94,000. But how does Ark arrive at this optimistic estimate, and what are the chances of Bitcoin traders seeing six figures in the next five years?

In its "Big Ideas 2025" report, Ark credits institutional interest, rising demand from emerging markets, and a wider view of the crypto as an effective form of "digital gold" will all combine to propel Bitcoin to new highs.

The firm calculated that $1.5 million target by measuring Bitcoin's institutional penetration rates and its adoption as a safe-haven asset across emerging markets, but that outcome would certainly be a bull case scenario.

Wood also presented what she described as a base case scenario in which Bitcoin's price would rise to $710,000 and a bear case scenario in which it would still hit $300,000.

Stretching its forecast model to its most optimistic levels, Ark claims Bitcoin has a shot at hitting $2.4 million by 2030 -- but the firm is sticking to $1.5 million as its official five-year price forecast.

Bitcoin trades at about $94,000 at the time of this writing. So, could it surge nearly 1,500% to $1.5 million within the next five years?

Image source: Getty Images.

What happened to Bitcoin over the past five years?

Bitcoin's price rose more than 1,100% over the past five years, even as rising interest rates chilled the cryptocurrency market in 2022 and 2023. Five catalysts drove its price higher.

First, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) cleared Bitcoin's first spot price exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to start trading in January 2024. That drew more institutional investors to put funds into it, and made it easy to invest in it without a crypto wallet.

Second, in April 2024, Bitcoin went through its most recent halving -- an event built into the underlying code of the crypto that reduces the rewards that miners earn for validating transactions on its blockchain by 50%. These events occur just about every four years, and by making it harder and less lucrative to mine Bitcoin, they reduce the rate at which new coins are introduced, thus supporting its price. Some 19.86 million Bitcoins of the maximum total supply of 21 million Bitcoins have already been mined -- and future halvings will draw out the mining of the remainder until the year 2140. To bulls like Wood, that scarcity makes Bitcoin an asset more comparable to gold and other precious metals than it is to inflationary tokens.

Third, the Federal Reserve cut the benchmark federal funds interest rate three times in 2024. Lower rates attracted more investors back toward riskier assets like cryptocurrencies. Fourth, inflation-wracked countries could adopt Bitcoin as a national currency. A few small countries such as El Salvador and the Central African Republic have tried this strategy, though their attempts ended abruptly. Still, other nations might follow with more successful experiments as Bitcoin's price stabilizes.

Lastly, President Trump's pro-Bitcoin policies, including his intent to establish a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and his appointment of cryptocurrency advocate Paul Atkins as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, generated more tailwinds for the broader cryptocurrency market.

But does a $1.5 million price target make sense?

Those catalysts could drive Bitcoin's price higher, but for it to hit $1.5 million would require a lot more institutional buying. Bitcoin Magazine estimates that 10% to 13% of all of the circulating Bitcoins are already held by institutional investors, ETFs, and sovereign funds.

That percentage might sound low, but it's slowly catching up to gold. According to the World Gold Council, a trade association for the gold industry, global central banks held 17% of all of the gold ever mined at the end of 2024. The WGC also found that 15% of institutional investors held physical gold in their portfolios in 2022. In that context, one can view Bitcoin's transformation into a form of "digital gold" as already underway -- and its institutional ownership probably won't double or triple within the next five years.

Moreover, Bitcoin remains much more volatile than gold -- and big institutional investors and sovereign funds probably won't significantly increase their positions unless its price