Bitcoin price prediction 2030-2050: What might happen to BTC in the long term?
The very first cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), still has the largest market capitalisation in the crypto market as of 18 April 2023.
Bitcoin has moved beyond being a peer-to-peer version of electronic cash to becoming a store of value and a potential hedge against inflation.
In 2021, BTC’s value;grew from $29,374.15 on 1 January to $46,306.45 on 31 December, managing to surpass the $60,000 mark twice, most notably when it reached its all-time high of $68,789.63 on 10 November that year.
Live Bitcoin (BTC) Price Chart
While the cryptocurrency fell over 60% in 2022 amid wider investor sentiment shift, the new year has provided some potential grounds for optimism as the token broke through the $25,000 mark to trade $29,159.90 – its highest price in nine months – on 30 March 2023.
So far in 2023, BTC has settled over $20,000, gaining more than 60% from its 2022 year-end price of $16,547.50 since the start of the year at the time of writing (18 April 2023) amid expected slowing of US Federal Reserve’s (Fed) interest rate hikes.
Will bitcoin go up in the long term, and what is the bitcoin price prediction for 2030 and beyond?
Will BTC volatility continue in 2023?
The BTC price hit two-year lows in November 2022, amid the wider turbulence in cryptocurrency markets that followed the collapse of FTX crypto exchange. Although BTC has recovered some losses in 2023, it’s still a far cry from its record price, set less than 18 months ago. .
AJ Bell’s head of investment analysis Laith Khalaf pointed out that over the past ten years Bitcoin investors enjoyed the highest returns among other assets, with £1,000 invested in 2013 growing to over £1.6m today.
He said: “Those who have sat out the crypto craze can console themselves with the fact that the number of Bitcoin believers who have captured the full ten-year return is probably as small as that number is large.
“Ten years ago, Bitcoin was little known, and even the very early crypto buyers would have had to watch their investment double in value 12 times to the peak in 2021, without cashing in any profits, in order to harvest the full ten-year return. They would also have had to casually sit by and not press the intense panic button as their investment fell by 73% in 2018."
VP Capital founder Viktor Prokopenya also noted that cryptocurrency markets reward patient investors who can withstand the inherent market volatility.
In an interview with Crypto Investor, he said: “I have seen this volatility play out before. In 2017, the value of bitcoin fell from $20,000 to $3,000.
“Now, with the war in Ukraine and rising inflation, we are witnessing instability across all asset classes. Seasoned investors will ride out this volatility, understanding that the market will bounce back."
After the collapse of Terra’s LUNA crypto and stablecoin in May 2022 and the following fall of the BTC price, Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital, commented:
Novogratz believed that cryptocurrencies would not disappear and that the community would stay resilient. However, he added:
Novogratz also warned that “picking bottoms is dangerous and if you do, scale in slowly”.
Will halving boost BTC price again?
Bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million tokens. As of 18 April 2023, there were 19,349,456 BTC in circulation.
In order to reduce the rate at which new bitcoins are issued, the cryptocurrency was designed to undergo halving events roughly every four years. The events reduce the number of tokens released into circulation by halving their supply and making the token scarcer, thus raising its value.
Research conducted by Capital.com showed that the value of BTC has enjoyed a bull market lasting between 12 and 15 months after each halving event occurred. The past three halving events that took place in 2012, 2016, and 2020 saw the BTC price surge by 9,915%, 2,949%, and 665% respectively.
The next Bitcoin halving event is said to take place on April 2024.
Halvings tend to create buzz and excitement in crypto circles, but do they necessarily mean that bitcoin’s future price will rally?
A spokesperson for Capital.com's data team said: “From a historical perspective, every next halving pushes the BTC price surge a little lower, meaning that the effect of bitcoin halving may be winding down. That doesn’t mean that the halving won’t drive the price up; however, its impact is notably decreasing every four years."
Bitcoin’s fifth and sixth halving events, which are set to take place in 2028 and 2032, and the halving cycle around them, could be factors shaping the bitcoin price prediction 2030.
Joe Burnett, a mining analyst at Blockware Solutions, believed bitcoin’s halving sessions could be good for its future price projections. He said: “Over the long run, bitcoin gets programmatically more scarce... The final 1,000,000 BTC [tokens] won’t all be mined until around 2140 – over 100 years away. This ever-increasing scarcity will be a large driver for the future price of bitcoin, as market participants search for tools to preserve their wealth.”
Other factors shaping a BTC price prediction
At the beginning of 2020, the total global cryptocurrency market cap stood at around $191bn. The crypto market peaked at $2.9trn in November 2021, and at the time of writing is hovering around the $516bn mark.
The Global Wealth 2022 report by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) stated that “crypto assets reached a market cap of over $2trn at the end of December 2021, a figure larger than the gross domestic product of Canada. Our forecasts suggest that this value could grow four to five times bigger before the end of the decade, despite recent bearish sentiment”.
The report continued:
Should these figures bear themselves out, we could see the mass adoption and normalisation of cryptocurrencies in the financial world.
Positive developments in the 2021 BTC cryptocurrency market included the adoption of BTC as legal tender by El Salvador in early September and the launch of the bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) in October.
The first ever bitcoin-linked ETF offered retail investors diversification, protection, and liquidity, and a new way to get involved in the rapidly growing world of cryptocurrencies.
DailyFX analyst Tammy Da Costa said, while BTC remained the “father” of cryptocurrencies, it could face much greater competition from the second-largest cryptocurrency, ether (ETH). She told Capital.com:
Rising adoption rates could bode well for bitcoin’s future price. BTC was accepted as a form of payment by over 15,000 businesses as of October 2022, data from Fundera showed, and this number is constantly growing.
Mark Basa, global brand and business manager at HOKK Finance, said:
Is bitcoin a good inflation hedge?
A number of analysts have pointed out the similarities between gold and BTC, which could be another factor driving the price of the cryptocurrency in the long-term.
A report published by ETF Stream in March 2022 said: “The similarities between bitcoin and gold are difficult to ignore. Both are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a natural hedge against inflation; there is a finite amount of both; they usually have relatively low correlations to equities and fixed income; and they act as a store of value outside of traditional systems such as governments or central banks."
In May 2021, this was also noted by investment bank Goldman Sachs. In October 2021, JPMorgan analysts echoed the sentiment: “Institutional investors appear to be returning to bitcoin, perhaps seeing it as a better inflation hedge than gold.”
According to Da Costa, while comparisons between bitcoin and gold were appropriate in 2021, more recent market dynamics show that cryptocurrencies also behave in line with technology stocks. She said: “Throughout last year, bitcoin was seen as a potential hedge against inflation, a characteristic akin to gold. However, this narrative has shifted in the first quarter of the year as the direct correlation between cryptocurrency and tech stocks becomes more apparent.”
Joe Burnett said BTC could be treated as a highly volatile long-term savings account, but not as an investment as it offers no potential future cash flows.
He said: “It simply is another form of cash or money. In comparison to other tools that have historically been used as money, bitcoin is the most scarce."
He added:
Bitcoin price prediction round-up for 2030 and beyond
Let's now take a look at some of the longer-term bitcoin price predictions that were being made as of 6 April 2023. Remember that price forecasts, especially for something as potentially volatile as cryptocurrency, are very often wrong. Also, keep in mind that many long-term crypto price predictions are made using an algorithm, which means they can change at any time.
DigitalCoinPrice had a longer-term BTC price prediction that argued bitcoin could trade at an average price of $305,981.72 in 2030. While the algorithmic forecaster did not provide a bitcoin price prediction for 2040 or 2050, it did forecast that the coin could be worth $571,195.49 in 2032.
PricePrediction gave an extremely bullish bitcoin price prediction for 2030 claiming that the BTC price could rise to $564,433.66 that year, growing further still to an eye-watering potential $1,168,666.81 in 2032.
According to Telegaon’s BTC prediction, bitcoin could trade at $175,109.22 in 2030, and more than double by 2040 to a potential average of $353,429.23. The website’s bitcoin price prediction for 2050 suggested BTC could hit $646,234.22.
Note that algorithm-based price predictions can be wrong as they use past performance to inform their estimates. Always conduct your own due diligence before trading or investing, and never invest or trade money you cannot afford to lose.
Analysts’ views on BTC forecast for 2030
A panel of 55 industry specialists surveyed by Finder in October 2022 expected the coin to surge to $270,722 by December 2030 – less than half than the $567,472 prediction a year earlier.
Previously, a January 2022 report published by ARK Invest analyst Yassine Elmandjra gave an even more positive outlook for bitcoin in 2030, saying the price could reach $1m.
CoinLoan founder and CEO Alex Faliushin agreed with ARK Investment’s bullish outlook, noting that solid cryptocurrency regulation will be required to attract more institutional money into the space and boost the price of bitcoin by 2030.
“In 2030, it could be very realistic that BTC will reach $1,000,000 per BTC, given that many funds are just starting to pay attention to it and many can’t even hold it on their balance sheet due to regulations,” Faliushin told Capital.com.
“When the whole industry will be more transparent and regulated, we are expecting to see new money coming into the market. This could lead to a sharp price rise,” he concluded.
Mike McGlone, senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, told Capital.com that limited supply and rising demand would suggest a bullish bitcoin projection. The analyst expected that by 2030, the $100,000 mark could become .
He said: "The bottom line is that supply is declining, by code and demand, and adoption is rising. I expect those trends to continue for bitcoin, which is well on its way to becoming the digital collateral benchmark in a world going that way,” McGlone added.
Mark Basa, on the other hand, gave a more bullish bitcoin price projection. He expected the token to reach $1m in the next eight years.
“I think about it like this: A whole new generation of young people are going to be introduced to easier ways to buy bitcoin and interact with crypto. They’ll be faced with a much higher cost of living, US debt, inflation, and a housing market almost out of reach,” he told Capital.com.
“If they learn about bitcoin, and how it’s really their money, they are going to opt out of investing in the most common stocks and look at an asset that just keeps growing and growing due to its limited supply and decentralised nature.”