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When Will Bitcoin Reach $1M?
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Apr 14, 2025
Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hougan joins CoinDesk to discuss the strategies for short-term and long-term investors in the current volatile market driven by macroeconomic forces. Plus, why he remains bullish on bitcoin and a potential all-time high by the end of the year. This content should not be construed or relied upon as investment advice. It is for entertainment and general information purposes.
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If I'm a short-term investor, what should I be looking at
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What should I be wary of? You should be crossing your fingers. You know, good luck to the short-term investors
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The challenge in this market right now is the macro forces are so large and they're so idiosyncratic and so unpredictable
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We could have a tweet sometime in the next 10 minutes that sends the market plus 5% or down 5%
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should short-term investors be praying right now the global economy is experiencing
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major volatility as u.s president donald trump flip-flops on tariffs our next guest is the chief
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investment officer at bitwise and he says we've seen this all before and all signs point to bitcoin
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at a new all-time high by the end of the year. Matt Hogan, welcome to Markets Daily
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Thanks for having me. All right, it's Monday morning. A lot happened over the weekend. Talk to me about what you're
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watching and how you're making sense of where we're sitting this morning
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I think crypto is all about short-term versus long-term right now. Long-term, everything is
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lining up for a sustained bull market in crypto. We see continued flow into Bitcoin. We see continued
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loss of faith in institutions on the Ethereum and other assets side
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We see rise in stable coins, rise in tokenization. All of that's looking great
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But of course, we can't look past the short term. So most of us spent our weekend tracking the latest, you know, over and back on tariffs
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wondering how much macro chaos that will be in the market right now
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I really think investors need to decide, are they short term investors or are they long
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term investors? those have very different feels in the market right now. And that's sort of the mix I'm trying
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to weigh myself as I look at these markets. Let's talk about both short-term and long-term
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investors and what each cohort should be looking at right now, how they should be behaving
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Let's first look at short-term investors. If I'm a short-term investor, what should I be looking at
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What should I be wary of? You should be crossing your fingers. Good luck to the short-term
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investors. The challenge in this market right now is the macro forces are so large and they're so
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idiosyncratic and so unpredictable. We could have a tweet sometime in the next 10 minutes that sends
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the market plus 5% or down 5%. I think it's extraordinarily difficult to be a short-term
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investor in this sort of market activity. So I'd be monitoring the macro situation. I'd be
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monitoring every tweet coming out of Washington, and I'd be wondering what's going to happen next
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Maybe keep an eye on the 10-year interest rate, on the dollar weakening. It's a very difficult
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environment, I think, for short-term investors. You'd be maybe signing up for Truth Social if
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you don't already have it, I'm assuming. For sure, yeah. Drip it into your veins
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I guess. You have to be monitoring that stuff right now. Now, sticking with those short-term
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investors, I want to talk about U.S. President Donald Trump really flip-flopping on these
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tariffs. Talk to me about what that signals for you. Yeah, I think in the short term
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it signaling just that this is a very volatile market I think as you extend out a little bit it can be positive for the global economy in the medium term That what you hearing from everyone out there
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And you're in this difficult situation where we're clearly breaking something in the existing economy
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We're clearly slowing down global trade. We're clearly weakening the dollar. We're clearly introducing uncertainty
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That is a negative setback. And there's this waiting game to see when the Fed or the Treasury will step in to inject liquidity into the market, will give us a new sort of recovery program
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The challenge about us, where we're sitting from a short-term perspective, is all the signaling coming out of the Fed and out of the Treasury is we're not going to do anything
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The market is functioning. It may be challenged, but it's functioning. So whether it's former Fed governors writing pieces for Bloomberg, even Janet Yelling adding her thoughts on the market earlier today, they're all saying this is not the responsibility of the Fed and the Treasury
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So I think investors are sort of playing this waiting game. When will people come to the rescue
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And the people who usually come to the rescue say not yet
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And that, I think, gives us a negative bias in the short term
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So if I were if I were guessing, I think there's more risk than opportunity until we see the Fed or the Treasury ride to the rescue
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And there's just no sign that they're planning to do that right now. Well, my next you've kind of answered my next question, but I was going to say, what's the likelihood you think that they do come to the rescue eventually
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Well, eventually the likelihood is 100 percent. Eventually, they can't resist the big red button
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They've been taught over time that when there is market uncertainty or economic uncertainty, you have to come to the rescue with liquidity
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I think if we see more challenges in the Treasury market or disorderly sell off in the dollar, I think you'll see them step in
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So it's going to happen eventually. But I do read from the signaling that it will be slower than many people expect
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So this uncertainty could certainly stretch for days. Maybe it could stretch for weeks. Possibly it could stretch for months
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I think we're in for a relatively significant period of volatility in the markets before those forces ride to the rescue
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But make no mistake, eventually this is a political game and eventually they will ride to the rescue
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It's just a matter of when it will happen, but I think it could take a little bit longer than people have been conditioned to expect in the past
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Now, let's talk about those long term investors. You said at the top of this interview that we are gearing up for a bull market or a bull cycle. Talk to me about what needs to happen for that to come to fruition
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I mean, there are any number of catalysts. So I'm extraordinarily bullish for the end of the year
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I think we're going to see a relatively significant decoupling between Bitcoin and equities
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I think you're going to see Bitcoin move to new all-time highs. And Bitwise's prediction from December of last year that we'll get to $200,000 on Bitcoin, I think, still is plainly in sight
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What do we need to have that happen? We need the macro economy to settle down a little bit
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We need maybe one of these rescue packages to start to come into the market I think if we see either of those things this market is primed to rip If you look at how Bitcoin in particular has been performing over this market pullback
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it's done significantly better than in previous stock market corrections. Usually when there's
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a stock market correction, at least for the last 10 years, if the stock market is down 10
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Bitcoin is down 30. Instead, this time, Bitcoin is more or less keeping pace with the equity market
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To me, that's an incredible sign of resilience and strength. Two years ago, if I told you that the global economy was falling apart and Bitcoin would be at $84,000, you would have laughed at me
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And yet that's what we're seeing. So as soon as we see some signal that the economy is going to stabilize, that macro will get out of the headlines, I think we'll quickly be to new all-time highs
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And if we do see any sort of stimulus or the Fed or the Treasury stepping in, I think it's off to the races and on towards Bitwise's $200,000 target
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You tweeted something yesterday that I thought was kind of funny. It made me chuckle
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You said you were doing some research on Bitcoin's performance during previous stock market pullbacks
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Talk to me about what you found there. It felt a little bit like deja vu when I was reading what you found
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Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable. I entered into Google to figure out what happened in 2018
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And it said that the market pulled back due to Trump's tariff wars, weakening dollar, exactly the same things that we're living right now
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And I think that's important for people to remember. We have been through these sort of market crises
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We have seen what happens in the crypto market. Look, crypto is in a generational, multi-decade bull market
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We can have these short-term challenges that set us back. But long term, the forces powering this industry forward are going to overcome and overwhelm that
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So it was fun to flash back a handful of years to the previous Trump presidency and see that, you know, we have experienced this before and there is light at the end of the tunnel eventually
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One of the other big narratives, big headlines this morning is that of gold versus Bitcoin
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Gold obviously up, I think about 20 percent, Bitcoin down. Talk to me about how you make sense of that and what that's telling you
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Oh, what that tells me is that Bitcoin's long-term price target is going up, right
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Gold is a proxy for current demand for hard money assets, for store of value assets
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When I look at Bitcoin's addressable market, I assume it's going to match gold in about five to ten years
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So as gold's addressable market goes up, the long-term price target for Bitcoin goes up as well
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The reason Bitcoin is down is because it's both a hedge asset and an emerging risky asset
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So what we've seen historically in the short term, when there's market volatility, you see Bitcoin pull back with all other risky assets
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But in the long term, it catches up and then some. So every time gold sets a new all-time high, I cheer
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It means that Bitcoin's ultimate all-time high is ticking up. It used to be $800,000
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Now to match gold, maybe it's $1.1 million. I saw today there a prediction gold could go to 4 out of I forget it was Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan If that the case you talking about a million and a half Bitcoin So gold sort of forecasts the direction Bitcoin is going long term Again we just need this
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market risk to stabilize a little bit and you're going to see Bitcoin catch up and then some
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Okay. I have to ask this because I know people who are watching are wondering this
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now that they've heard you say it. We hear these bold predictions for Bitcoin
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like a million dollars, a million and a half. Now, if you take what you've just said
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looking at the price of gold in comparison to Bitcoin and what that tells you about Bitcoin's
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future, when could we get to Bitcoin over a million dollars? Yeah, I think five to 10 years
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is about right. I think one or two more cycles. Look, a few things are true. The vast majority of
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people who need to own Bitcoin don't yet own it at all. We need a trillion dollars of buying into
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the Bitcoin market for institutions to just level up to a neutral portfolio. I think there's no way
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that happens without pushing Bitcoin's price up significantly. I'd also say, you know, having
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watched various technologies over the past 20 or 30 years, everyone's always skeptical of the
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digital version of og goods. But find me another industry where the digital version didn't
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just catch up, but eventually surpassed the physical good. It's happened in media. It's
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happened in advertising. It's happened in movies. It's happened in streaming. It's going to happen
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in store of value assets. So how long could it take? I think five or 10 years, right? Remember
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10 years ago, where was Bitcoin right now? It was 2014. It was trading for a few hundred dollars
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Today, we're talking about $100,000. It's not that hard to imagine that in 10 years
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it's easily at a million or more. I think it'll happen by 2029, but it could be anywhere around
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then. But all the trends are pointing in that direction from where I sit. Now, this is the
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last thing I'm going to ask you. If you were investing today as either that short-term investor
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or long-term investor, where would you be looking to put your money? And I think I know your answer
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given our discussion, but lay it out for me. Look, there are two places I think are extraordinarily
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attractive right now. I think this remains the best risk-adjusted time to purchase Bitcoin in
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its history. We've removed a huge amount of risk. We've removed custody risk, trading risk
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regulatory risk, government risk, and yet we still have 10x upside at a minimum. To me
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that makes an extraordinarily positive expected return from a risk-adjusted basis. I think any
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investor who doesn't have Bitcoin in their portfolio should take this pullback to establish
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that first position, at least get to 1% or 2% Bitcoin, maybe 10% more if you're more bullish
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The other place that I find extraordinarily attractive right now is all the way on the other end of the spectrum at the DeFi protocol layer
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I continue to think we're setting up for another DeFi summer at some point
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You look at various statistics, they're already at all-time highs. Those are proven programs
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And if we get regulatory relief, I think there's a lot of value in some of those DeFi-specific protocols
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So a barbell strategy that's Bitcoin and then a handful of DeFi protocols, I think would be extraordinarily well positioned for the rest of the year
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Matt, thanks so much for joining the show. Thanks for having me
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