JPMorgan Puts a Number on Bitcoin for the First Time: 10% a Year, With a Big Caveat

Bitcoin just earned a spot in one of Wall Street’s most closely watched return forecasts, and it landed at the top of the table.

J.P. Morgan Asset Management projected a 10% compound annual return for Bitcoin over the next 10 to 15 years in its 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, released Monday.

It’s the 31st annual edition of the report and the first to include Bitcoin. The forecast tops the firm’s projections for U.S. large-cap stocks at 7.5%, gold at 5.5% and a classic 60/40 stock-bond portfolio at 7%.

The catch is volatility. The report pegs Bitcoin’s annualized volatility at 55%, compared with about 17% for gold. That’s why Bitcoin’s arithmetic average return, a simple average of yearly gains, comes in at 20.9%, more than double the compound figure investors would actually keep after big price swings.

The firm stopped short of adding Bitcoin to the models it uses to map how assets move together. “For the first time, we put a range on bitcoin returns, though we do not yet include bitcoin in our main covariance matrices,” the report says. Instead, JPMorgan built a separate, smaller matrix comparing Bitcoin with a subset of assets, citing the cryptocurrency’s volatility and unstable correlations as obstacles to widespread portfolio inclusion.

JPMorgan also pushed back on a popular bull case, calling the idea that currency debasement will spark a rush into crypto “wide of the mark.”

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan welcomed the forecast, if not every input. “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,” he wrote on X.

Hougan argued that JPMorgan’s 55% volatility assumption is too high, which in turn makes its return forecast too conservative. Bitwise, which manages crypto index funds and ETFs, has a stake in that view.

The forecast comes as JPMorgan deepens its own blockchain bets. The bank is bringing JPM Coin, a token representing dollar deposits, to Ethereum, and has joined BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and the DTCC in tokenized stock efforts.

The timing is notable. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs drew $526.7 million on Monday, their best day since Sept. 22, with BlackRock’s IBIT taking in $665.2 million. That trimmed October’s net outflows to about $88 million.

Bitcoin hovered around $82,000, while the 10-year Treasury yield held above 5%, a competing return with far less volatility. JPMorgan’s own global bond forecasts are their highest in two decades.