Bitwise CIO Says Institutional Bitcoin Allocations Could Reach Trillions Over Next Decade

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan expects institutional investors to become a major source of bitcoin demand over the next decade, telling CoinDesk that trillions of dollars could move into the asset as it becomes more widely treated as a mainstream financial holding. Hougan said financial advisers and family offices are likely to be among the first professional investors to allocate at scale, with larger institutions potentially following over time.

The outlook matters because it frames bitcoin’s next growth phase as less dependent on retail traders or individual corporate buyers and more tied to access by large capital pools. Hougan pointed to 13F filings for spot bitcoin ETFs and steps by major wealth firms including Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo to make bitcoin more available to clients as early signs of that shift.

According to Hougan, institutions such as foundations, endowments, pension plans, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds and central banks control between $100 trillion and $200 trillion globally. He argued that even a 1% allocation from those pools could be enough to support Bitwise’s long-term bitcoin price target of $1.3 million per coin by 2035.

That target is tied to Hougan’s view of bitcoin as part of the broader store-of-value market. He said gold’s market capitalization has grown from about $2 trillion when gold ETFs launched in 2004 to roughly $30 trillion today, and projected that if the market keeps expanding at its historical annual pace, bitcoin taking a 25% share would imply a much higher valuation.

Hougan also said Strategy, long one of the most prominent corporate bitcoin buyers, may no longer be the primary driver of future demand. He argued that the company’s earlier advantages have weakened as spot ETFs provide direct public-market bitcoin exposure and as Strategy’s debt-backed buying model becomes harder to scale.