Epic signal! Wall Street veteran calculates the $BTC million-dollar path, but everyone has overlooked this critical variable

A few days ago, a financial advisor asked me whether I truly believe that one $BTC can rise to one million dollars. I understand his skepticism; that number does sound crazy, meaning the price would need to increase another fourteen times. Looking back to 2018 when I first entered this space, $BTC was around four thousand dollars, and the idea of a million dollars also seemed absurd to me.

But now, my perspective has changed. As I delved deeper into research, I realized that, like the advisor, I was making a fundamental mistake when evaluating $BTC’s potential. The mistake was viewing the value storage market as static.

My analysis framework is simple: consider $BTC as an emerging digital store of value competing in the same market as gold. To estimate its potential price, three steps are needed: estimate the total size of the global value storage market, estimate the share $BTC could potentially capture, then divide by the total supply of 21 million coins.

Currently, this market is worth about $38 trillion, with gold accounting for $36 trillion and $BTC about $1.4 trillion. $BTC’s share is less than 4%. If the total market size remains stagnant, $BTC would need to capture over half of the market to reach one million dollars, which is a very high threshold.

However, the key point is that the value storage market is not static. Take gold as an example: in 2004, when the first US gold ETF launched, its total market value was about $2.5 trillion, similar to today’s $BTC market size. Over the next nearly twenty years, gold’s market cap expanded to nearly $40 trillion at a compound annual growth rate of about 13%.

The driving force behind this growth is ongoing concerns about fiat currency devaluation, government debt expansion, geopolitical risks, and loose monetary policies. If this growth trend continues over the next decade, the global value storage market could reach approximately $121 trillion.

In this expanded market, $BTC wouldn’t need to dominate. It only needs to increase its market share from less than 4% to around 17%, and its price could reach one million dollars. Moving from 4% to 17% is still a significant increase, but looking at $BTC’s recent development trajectory, this goal is not out of reach.

A few years ago, the US didn’t have a spot $BTC ETF, and institutional investors were few and far between. Its volatility also deterred many. Today, $BTC ETFs are among the fastest-growing ETF categories in history; from university endowments to sovereign wealth funds, various institutions are starting to include it in their portfolios. As long-term volatility declines, more professional investors are considering allocating 3% to 5%.

Of course, we must consider risks. The expansion of the value storage market could slow down, or gold prices might pull back. $BTC might also fail to increase its market share successfully. These are reasonable concerns.

But there’s also another possibility: as global concerns over sovereign debt reach a critical point, the growth rate of the value storage market could accelerate beyond the past twenty years; simultaneously, with its digital native, programmable, and easily transferable features, $BTC could end up capturing a much larger share than 17%.

My baseline scenario assumes the value storage market continues to expand at historical rates, and $BTC maintains its current share growth trend. If this scenario holds, $BTC’s price will be far above current levels. The path is uncertain, but the logic and data point to a future more achievable than many imagine.