JPMorgan forecasts 10% annual bitcoin returns over 10 years

J.P. Morgan Asset Management issued its first 10-year bitcoin return forecast, projecting a 10% compounded annual return. The forecast appears in the firm's 31st annual Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions report. The report estimates bitcoin volatility at 55%. The report projects a 5.5% return for gold.

The report's analysts caution that bitcoin's volatility and unstable correlations with other assets remain obstacles to widespread inclusion in investment portfolios. Bitcoin is not yet included in the firm's main models for measuring how asset prices move together. The analysts introduced a separate, smaller covariance matrix comparing bitcoin with a subset of other assets. JPMorgan said the firm could revise its approach as bitcoin's volatility declines and correlations stabilize, particularly as regulation becomes clearer and liquidity and price discovery improve.

Dr. Sheena Shah and Dennis Cristallo wrote that investors are increasingly exploring crypto assets, supported by more defined regulation and growing infrastructure. Shah and Cristallo cited exchange-traded funds, futures, publicly traded crypto companies, options, bank-grade custody and financing markets. Shah and Cristallo described bitcoin as the anchor of a crypto ecosystem with over 60 million coins and tokens. Shah and Cristallo said bitcoin offers transactional security, longevity, improving regulatory clarity and liquidity.

Institutional investment in digital assets continues to expand. JPMorgan analysts estimated earlier this month that around $50 billion had flowed into digital assets in 2026. Separate JPMorgan research examined bitcoin's relationship with gold and how investor hedging activity could affect bitcoin's performance relative to traditional assets. BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF, IBIT, attracted $665 million in inflows on Monday, the fund's largest single-day inflow since October 2025.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan welcomed the forecast but argued that JPMorgan's 55% volatility estimate was too high. Hougan cited bitcoin's declining volatility over the past 15 years. Hougan characterized JPMorgan's forecast as predicting that bitcoin would be the best-performing asset of the next decade. Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor also welcomed the report. Saylor said, "Wall Street is doing the math."