Most people in crypto call the outlook bullish while also expecting a dip before year end. Doing what most people expect is a mistake. A small dip is possible, and Bitcoin will not climb back to $100,000 without swings, but the next leg higher will likely come sooner than the crowd thinks. If everyone waits for a dip, the dip may never come.
SWIFT backs tokenized transactions
SWIFT, the global payments network that links banks across countries, announced it will follow the USC's lead and fully support crypto and tokenized asset transactions. The SWIFT platform will let users move any form of regulated value, whether fiat or tokenized, at global scale across more than 200 countries and 40,000 corridors. This removes the old "TradFi or DeFi" split - it is not either/or.
The SEC is opening the door to onchain assets
SEC Chair Paul Atkins said on CNBC that crypto is "near and dear to my heart" and that the goal is to move things onchain. The previous administration ran a closed-door policy that refused these new products. The SEC has changed that to give clarity to the market, innovators, and investors.
The first step was a definition, set out in a joint interpretive release with the CFTC, separating a tokenized security from other kinds of tokenized assets. The SEC works in the securities lane and has issued a proposed rule on how to raise money onchain. This proceeds even though the Clarity Act failed to pass Congress.
For trading tokenized securities, the SEC created an "innovation exemption" - a sandbox, a controlled environment where companies issue tokenized securities that carry the real rights and privileges of the underlying security. This means trading the actual security onchain. That differs from offshore versions, which are more synthetic products.
The Ethereum thesis
Crypto's next 15 years will look very different from its first 15. Part of that may be Ethereum (ETH) passing Bitcoin (BTC) in value. The reasoning: everything will be tokenized, and that becomes the default, with new assets issued in tokenized form and living on the blockchain.
Second, the whole blockchain system will move toward public blockchains with zero-knowledge-proof privacy built on top. Zero-knowledge proofs are the next tech frontier. Like AI, they have hardware needs and rely on cryptography. They are the way to build strong privacy on top of public systems, and they reach past blockchains. Almost no one is talking about ZK now, but within five years it will be an abstracted, important technology built into nearly everything.
Downstream of all this, ETH is expected to become more valuable than BTC. Once that happens, people will ask why an inert asset was ever valued less than productive money that pays a yield.
$500,000 Bitcoin by 2030 as simple math
Rick Edelman, founder of a $300 billion fund, predicts $500,000 Bitcoin by 2030, matching another forecast though reached a different way. The simple version: take the total value of all global assets - stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, oil, and the rest. If the world allocates 1% of that to Bitcoin, that is $500,000 per coin. A 2% allocation makes it $1 million. A 1% adoption rate worldwide within four years is reasonable.
Bitcoin has been the best performing asset class since it began, with no reason it stops being so for the foreseeable future. The four-year cycle matters little here; the focus is 2030 and 2035 rather than next quarter.
Wall Street and sovereign funds are buying
Wall Street started adopting crypto in 2024 when it green-lit Bitcoin's ETF. Two years in, firms are building infrastructure and using their salespeople to tell trillions in wealth-management clients they need some Bitcoin and Ethereum. Wall Street is a selling machine, and it is ramping up fast.
Bitwise's head of research reported strong interest in Bitcoin among sovereign wealth funds across many regions, not just El Salvador, which has held Bitcoin for years. These funds talk about currency debasement and the need to hold hard assets. Gold is seeing record inflows. One sovereign wealth fund the research team spoke with was selling its gold and other foreign-exchange reserves to fund Bitcoin purchases - a dual approach to hard-asset exposure through both Bitcoin and gold.
Sovereign wealth funds control huge amounts of capital and show willingness to take some risk on a newer asset like Bitcoin. Even a small slice of 2% or 3% of their portfolios can move the Bitcoin market in a meaningful way because the total capital is so large. There is also interest in the US building a strategic Bitcoin reserve, tied to executive orders that have been issued.
Why advisers should recommend 10-40%
Rick Edelman once argued for a 1% Bitcoin allocation and has since raised it to 10-40%: 10% for conservative, 25% for moderate, 40% for aggressive portfolios. A 40% recommendation surprises people. Part of the reason is the longevity curve - the classic 60/40 portfolio is broken, and people living longer need more in equities and for longer.
The other reason is tactical. At a 1% allocation, many advisers stay put out of inertia or laziness. They are already successful with happy clients, so they ask why they should bother adding something new that is politically controversial and has a scam-marked history running from Mt. Gox to FTX, all for a small 1% slice. Push the recommended minimum to 10% and up to 40%, and the conversation becomes hard to ignore. That is how you win the attention of the advisory community and, through them, their clients.
