VanEck is in the news today after making a bold Bitcoin price projection. According to VanEck, the cryptocurrency could rise 32x by 2050 from its press time price of $90,000 to $2.9 million per coin.
The asset manager’s head of Digital Assets Research, Matthew Sigel, mentioned the likely adoption of BTC as a settlement currency and reserve asset for the ambitious goal. He said,
“Our baseline model shows that Bitcoin will reach $2.9 million by 2050, driven by its adoption as a settlement currency for 5-10% of global trade and a reserve holding 2.5% of central bank balance sheets.”
Source: VanEck
The Power Law marks similarly bold BTC goals
VanEck’s bear case Bitcoin price the projection was $130,000, while the bullish outlook was $53.4 million.
While huge, the targets were a little closer to Michael Saylor’s $3projection of $49 million if BTC reaches this 7%-22% of global wealth.
For her part, Cathie Wood of Ark Invest demoted its 2030 BTC price target from $1.5 million to $1.2 million, citing stablecoin dominance.
Most interestingly, however, the power law model showed a slight deviation from some of these objectives. For the 2040 outlook, the model assumed $1.6 million as a bear case and $4.7 million as a base case.
On the contrary, for 2030 the model’s bullish target was $1.5 million and $500,000 for the base case. This seemed to be in line with Wood’s view.
Source: Bitbo
Here it is worth noting that VanEck missed the 2025 price target. It had forecast $180,000, but BTC peaked at $126,000 and ended 2025 below $100,000.
Bitcoin’s Outlook for 2026
Meanwhile, Bernstein analysts believe BTC could rise 66% from its press time price of $90,000 to $150,000 by 2026, citing a potential tokenization boom. Likewise, Coinbase analysts believe a first-quarter recovery is also likely.
Alas, prediction place Kalshi estimated only a 14% chance of achieving such a goal before June. In other words, the market remains pessimistic about Bernstein’s aggressive target.
Source: Kalshi
Apart from the medium and long-term price outlook, the short-term price action has been somewhat fragile lately. According to Bitcoin Trader and Analyst: CrookedThere is relatively little demand for $90,000, especially from US spot ETFs.
The latest rebound was driven by dip buying in the spot market, as evidenced by the rising CVD (Cumulative Volume Delta) indicator.
However,
“I think for a strong rally we need unquestionable demand of $90,000.”
Source: Skew/X
Final thoughts
- VanEck predicted a bold price of $2.9-$53.4 million per BTC target by 2050, if the crypto is widely adopted as both a settlement currency and a reserve asset.
- In the short term, however, $90,000 should be defended for a sustained recovery over the next few days.