Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) doesn't need to reinvent itself to get to $1 million

The price of bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC) is getting scarcer than it seems, especially considering that it's already reached nearly $95,000 per coin.

If more investors and institutions keep showing up with new capital while new supply continues to be harder to come by, its price is more likely to go up than it is to go down over the long term. At least, that's the case being made by a growing number of people in the crypto industry who think the $1 million milestone is closer than most expect.

On May 1, another high-profile prediction was made, this time by Bitwise Asset Management's head of European research, Andre Dragosch, who anticipates Bitcoin reaching that target by 2029. But what exactly are Dragosch and others seeing that has them targeting seven figures for the coin's apex in the next few years?

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Per Bitcoin's protocol, there can only ever be 21 million coins mined. As of now, about 94% of the possible supply has already been mined. After the protocol's most recent halving in April 2024, the daily quantity of new supply being created is just 450 bitcoins.

But that figure overstates the supply that's actually available for purchasing. About 20% of all Bitcoin is thought to be lost, forgotten, or otherwise inaccessible due to people losing their cryptowallet credentials. Meanwhile, the market includes ongoing purchasing of the coin by corporate treasuries, asset managers sponsoring exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and perhaps soon governments. After all that, the amount of Bitcoin that could reasonably be bought or sold on the open market dwindles quickly, and no large holders have publicly committed to exiting their positions anytime soon.

And why does the floating supply of Bitcoin matter, if any holder can instantaneously increase it by opting to sell some of their coins to the market? Because it is float, not the total supply outstanding, which tends to drive prices in real markets. If you're trying to buy something and hardly anyone's selling it, your only option is to offer to pay more and more until a seller is enticed to part with their holding. The more this dynamic holds, the more pressure it places on price to adjust upward.

This element of Bitcoin's investment thesis isn't new, but it's becoming harder to ignore. As more of the circulating supply gets packed away into long-term storage by players who would rather hold than sell, the coin starts to look less like a speculative asset and more like a finite commodity like gold, even if the comparison between the two is imperfect.

If demand stays the same, that alone would support higher prices over the long term, but if demand grows even a bit, that's when the $1 million price tag starts to look tenable.

Will it actually happen?

It's fair to be skeptical of price targets that sound more like marketing than analysis -- and it's important for investors to recognize clearly that when crypto industry insiders mention sky-high price targets, it's almost always closer to people "talking their books" (i.e., hyping the assets they hold) rather than reporting about the results of a fastidious analysis. A million dollars is a nice round number, and the timeline offers a target date that's conveniently far enough away for almost anything to happen in the intervening years. But in this case, the direction of travel is what matters more than the specific target figure.

Not too much will need to go right for Bitcoin for its price to grind higher and higher over the next few years and beyond. No matter what else happens, it will experience another halving in 2028, after which constraints on new supply will get dramatically tighter. As institutional investors, companies, and regular investors continue to accumulate the asset between now and then, there probably won't be more sellers than buyers on average. On a long enough timetable -- and there is a good chance that it will be longer than just a few years -- it is thus quite likely for Bitcoin's price to surpass $1 million.

That makes it an appealing purchase today.

Of course, this trend could weaken or break down. If regulators make an about-face and return to a more restrictive stance on crypto, it would impede adoption significantly and it might even crater prices in the near term. Similarly, if global liquidity dries up, or if Bitcoin fails to earn its role in institutional portfolios on an enduring basis, the story could change quickly.

So if you're going to buy this coin, you need to maintain a long-term holder's mentality rather than a trader's. You don't need it to reach a coin price of