JPMorgan issues first long-term bitcoin return forecast, projecting 10% annually

J.P. Morgan Asset Management has issued its first 10-year return forecast for bitcoin, projecting a 10% compounded annual return while cautioning that the cryptocurrency's volatility and unstable correlations with other assets remain obstacles to its widespread inclusion in investment portfolios.

The firm's 31st annual Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions report estimates bitcoin (BTC) volatility at 55%, compared with a projected 5.5% return for gold. While bitcoin is not yet included in the firm's main models for measuring how asset prices move together, the analysts have introduced a separate model comparing bitcoin with a subset of other assets.

"The volatility and unstable correlation of assets like bitcoin Bitcoin (BTC) remain an obstacle to their widespread inclusion in portfolios," the analysts wrote in the report. "Nevertheless, we initiate a long-term return forecast for BTC this year [and] provide a separate, smaller covariance matrix with BTC against a subset of assets."

The analysts could revise their approach as bitcoin's volatility declines and its correlations with other assets stabilize, particularly as regulation becomes clearer and liquidity and price discovery improve.

"Investors are nevertheless increasingly exploring crypto assets, supported by more defined regulation and growing infrastructure (e.g. exchange-traded funds, futures, publicly traded crypto companies, options, bank-grade custody and financing markets)," Dr. Sheena Shah and Dennis Cristallo wrote in the report. "With over 60 million coins and tokens, bitcoin is the anchor of the crypto ecosystem, offering transactional security, longevity, improving regulatory clarity and liquidity."

The forecast comes as 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 research from the bank has examined bitcoin's relationship with gold and how investor hedging activity could affect its performance relative to traditional assets.

BlackRock's spot bitcoin ETF, IBIT, meanwhile, attracted $665 million in inflows on Monday, its 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, citing bitcoin's declining volatility over the past 15 years.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight at you, then they add you to their Long-Term Capital Markets Assumptions paper and predict you'll be the best-performing asset of the next decade," Hougan wrote on X.

Strategy Chairman Michael Saylor also welcomed the report. "Wall Street is doing the math," he said on X.