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This week, the co-founder and the executive chairman of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor has returned to the news with yet another big call for Bitcoin. Saylor emphasized his positive outlook on Bitcoin while speaking to the audience at the Bitcoin 2024 conference held in Nashville on July 26, where he said that Bitcoin could even touch $13 million per coin by 2045. The prediction has gained considerable attention among the fans of cryptocurrencies and experts from the financial sphere. However, given that growth of about 90% is a very steep increase, what are some of the factors that can cause such an exponential increase?
Saylor’s $13 Million Prediction
Saylor, while delivering his keynote speech, presented numerous reasons why Bitcoin is likely to continue growing. He revealed that Bitcoin at the time of writing this article was trading at a little over $65000, had a market value of around $1.3 trillion, and comprised 0.1% of global wealth. If Bitcoin is to get to that value by 2045, it will need to grow at a rate of 29 percent per year and its market capitalization will be $280 trillion, which represents around 7 percent of the global wealth.
Furthermore, Saylor outlined two other possible scenarios in his assumptions;
- Bull Case: This virtual currency has the potential of rallying to as high as $49 million per coin thus representing 22% of the world’s wealth.
- Bear Case: But the current value of one Bitcoin barely 3 million dollars could still be only 2% of the world’s total wealth.
These estimates stem from its assertion that Saylor firmly believes that Bitcoin will make up the greater part of the value of the world’s financial system within the next 20 years.
MicroStrategy’s Aggressive Bitcoin Strategy
Specifically, MicroStrategy has been considered one of the leading corporations that embraced Bitcoin. The company has since then, continuously added to its Bitcoin investment portfolio since buying its first in 2020. According to MicroStrategy’s balance sheet as of February 17, 2021, the company owns 478, 740 bitcoins that were bought for about $31.1 billion at an average price of $ 65,033 per Bitcoin.
In its new business strategy, MicroStrategy has emphasized owning Bitcoin as an asset. In 2024, company management laid off their employees by giving a raw net dismissal of 400 employees, which is 20% of the total employees of this organization, corporate aimed at aggressively purchasing more Bitcoins. It increased from 189,150 at the end of 2023 to 447,470 by the end of year 2024 in terms of bitcoins. This has caused a clear deviation to Bitcoin as its main asset, with more investment in digital currency instead of regular business operations.
Current Market Trends and Institutional Adoption
Bitcoin’s price has gone up and down several times, which has made it fluctuate by dipping by 0.5% to $95,507 from its record high of $109,000 in January 2025. This decline to a large extent can be explained by investors’ concerns regarding the change of approach in the US government towards crypto regulation, inflation, and interest rates.
However, despite these short-term fluctuations, it seems that institutional interest in Bitcoin is decent. In the last quarter of 2024, hedge and pension funds increase their investments in US-traded Bitcoin ETFs. For instance, the State of Wisconsin Investment Board increased its stake in the iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF by two times, to 6 million.
What It Would Take for Bitcoin to Reach $13 Million
The goal that Saylor is trying to achieve means that Bitcoin needs to experience a considerable increase in capital, circulation, as well as the technological development of the used blockchain. I will discuss below what might have been considered as some of the primary factors that can explain this rather high price:
1. Market Capitalization Growth
- Today, there is around $1.9 trillion market capitalization of Bitcoin to reach up to $280 trillion. This would mean Bitcoin is a phenomenon of ‘extracting’ value from:
- Gold Market ($14 trillion): If Bitcoin takes the place of gold as the new form of saving, then the new market will fit into this segment.
- Stock Market ($100 trillion+): Flows of more investors out of Equities into Bitcoin may promote its development.
- Government Bonds ($130 trillion): Bitcoin, it has to attain a status similar to bonds wherein it is considered a haven.
2. Institutional and Corporate Adoption
This means to attain an annualized growth rate of 29% for Bitcoin, institutions and more corporations have to keep on buying it at an even faster rate. The same applies for pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, and some firms in the Fortune 500 list – if they invest even a fraction of their entire investments in Bitcoin then demand will be further established.
3. Regulatory Environment
Hence, the following factors hint at the next big development for Bitcoin coming from the government’s regulations. Potential factors that might enhance the adoption of Bitcoin include, favorable regulations that protect the investors; enabling of Bitcoin ETFs; and growth of development of other digital assets that will create demand for the digital currency. On the other hand, restricted policies or bans in some of the world’s largest markets may limit the growth of its expansion.
4. Global Macroeconomic Trends
- Inflation & Currency Devaluation: when inflation persists to affect the purchasing capacity of the fiat currencies, then the fixed supply of bitcoin offers a viable alternative.
- Political Instability: Economic hardship like conditions that lead to the failure or weakening of traditional systems of banking are likely to encourage people to invest in bitcoin.
5. Technological Advancements
Thus, further developments rendered by the enhancement of Bitcoin’s infrastructure are prerequisites for its popularization with investors. Bitcoin’s current problems could be solved by relatively new and promising layer 2 solutions, known as the Lightning Network as well as cross-chain compatibility solutions.
Potential Challenges and Risks
Nevertheless, some risks may keep Bitcoin from reaching $13 million, according to the forecast:
- Regulatory restrictions: The Governments can come up with severe legislation that will regulate the use of bitcoins, thereby making worldwide popularization of Bitcoins a concern due to the risks associated with its usage.
- Technological issues: Currently, the scalability is questionable and, if Bitcoin will not work on increasing the speed of the transactions and decreasing the costs, the growth could be stopped.
- Market competition: Competing digital assets with superior technology, and user-friendliness may pose a threat to bitcoins.
- Security Threat: Attack vectors: As of now, Bitcoin’s security is very high and there are no known vulnerabilities involved but the advancement in Quantum Computing is a threat in the future to the cryptographic security of the bitcoins.
Can Bitcoin Realistically Hit $13 Million?
The major ingredient of this prognosis, which states that the Bitcoin price will be $13 million per piece by 2045, stems from Saylor’s vision of the cryptocurrency as a hegemonic financial asset. This would call for social acceptance and usage beyond what is currently witnessed, institutional embrace, and macroeconomic factors that support BTC as against established forms of capital.
It may have shown remarkable growth from its inception and has boasted of gross profit returns of 29 percent for 12 months compounded over 20 years, but achieving such an increment is quite emphatic. The achievement of this price target can be made possible depending on a combination of economic, technological, and regulatory factors. However, even if Bitcoin gets only a small part of what Saylor plans, it will be acknowledged as revolutionary in the financial markets worldwide.
