After years of being dismissed as a speculative tech play, Bitcoin is now being re-evaluated by institutional players and wealth managers alike
Several prominent investors are suggesting that Bitcoin, now valued around $2 trillion, may be entering a new phase in its evolution, one that could see its total market capitalization rival gold's $22 trillion dominance.
After years of being dismissed as a speculative tech play, Bitcoin is now being re-evaluated by institutional players and wealth managers like Paul Tudor Jones, who has bought the coin personally for his portfolio. They are considering it less as a payment tool or a venture capital asset and more as a form of digital wealth preservation. That shift in perception could drastically reshape how the market values it over the
Among the investors driving this narrative is Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, who has become a vocal proponent of Bitcoin's potential to rise further. In a recent interview, he suggested that if the cryptocurrency continues to be seen through the lens of traditional technology assets, its market ceiling likely falls somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion.
This would put Bitcoin in the same league as large-cap tech giants like Apple or Microsoft, which are commonly valued in the $1 trillion to $3 trillion range. However, Scaramucci believes that if it's instead treated as a modern store of value, then the comparison changes dramatically.
In that case, he argues, Bitcoin's valuation should eventually track gold's, implying a 10x jump from today's levels. That would mean a price tag of nearly $1 million per coin, a figure that may seem astronomical but isn't impossible considering the rapid pace of technological and financial innovation.
This view, once considered outlandish, is increasingly mentioned by other institutional investors who have revised their long-term models to account for what they see as a maturing, less speculative market for crypto.
If that evolution continues, two indicators will become increasingly important: user adoption and price stability. A rise in long-term holders and a decline in volatility would support the argument that Bitcoin is no longer a playground for speculators, but a tool for wealth preservation.
At present, estimates suggest that around 200 million active wallets exist globally, with roughly 100 million individual holders. To reach the kind of scale that would support a $20 trillion market cap, those numbers may need to grow nearly tenfold — putting Bitcoin in the hands of about one out of every eight people on Earth.
For now, that goal remains distant. But with each new round of adoption, the digital gold thesis edges closer to reality. And if the shift in mindset sticks, Bitcoin may ultimately find itself less compared to high-growth tech and more aligned with one of humanity's oldest measures of wealth.
