Road to $1M: The Bitcoin Play

This article analyzes incorporating bitcoin exposure into my road to $1M from a number of angles:

1. A survey of bitcoin price predictions over time from various sources

2. My own preferred window of analysis with price targets and confirmation markers

3. Comparative means of exposure

4. An initial sketch of sizing, entry, and exit given my preferences and projected portfolio

This is not advice.

Geoff Kendrick believes bitcoin will regain $100k in 2026 and $500k by 2030. In the same article, Cathie Wood is reported with a $710k target, $300k lower bound estimate, and $1.5M upper bound estimate. Citi Research estimates BTC will reach $112k by March 2027.

Bitcoin’s price in 2026 is currently predicted to peak in Q4.

Markets are giving a chance over 50% that bitcoin rises to 90k in 2026, a majority low estimate between 45k and 50k, with odds about 10% that bitcoin rises to 150k in 2026 or 200k by the end of 2027.

The Bitcoin Cycle Repeat Chart indicates a 2029 top of $216k.

I want to analyze the price of bitcoin through 2030 for three reasons:

1. There are many people making forecasts anchored to that year

2. Bitcoin tends to follow a 4 year cycle which allows me to make my own analysis

3. Four years is significantly shorter than the fastest of my 10X Strategies so far, which is a 7.5 year FNGO play. If I did the math properly, that’s a CAGR of about 36% (which feels extremely unlucky and unsettling in a superstitious way).

I’ll make my own projection using the four year cycle model and taking the smallest per-phase gain over the past four cycles, using this Caleb & Brown article as a source.

An exception will be the crash year, where the smallest gain would be the largest crash, and since we topped on apathy at $124k last year, I don’t think we are heading for a maximally severe crash. Quite the opposite, I think we will have a smaller than normal crash. 77% was the least severe crash phase in the Caleb & Brown data. A similar crash would produce a bottom price this year of about $28.5k. I don’t think this is reasonable and neither does the betting market mentioned in the prior section. Interestingly, it is very close to a geometric low I previously rejected ad absurdum. In that same article, I previously projected 50k as a reasonable bottom independent of the betting markets.

Being conservative in the current calculation means taking a lower number, so I’ll use $45k which is close to my own estimate and the betting market but on the low side of both. The per-phase conservative gains are:

1. Accumulation: +80%. Price at end of phase: 45 x 1.8 = $81k in 2027.

2. Growth: +120%. Price at end of phase: 81 x 2.2 = $178.2k in 2028.

3. Bubble: +81%. Price at end of phase: 178.2 x 1.81 = $322.5k in 2029.

While this is relatively conservative on the math, it ignores plausible factors on both the bull and bear side. On the bear side: Cycle-over-cycle gains continue to decrease, and the approach I’ve given doesn’t incorporate a deflation factor. This is intentional because the most recent cycle topped on apathy and the prior on euphoria, so I think a deflator would be overstated, but that’s a risk of my analytical judgment.

I’m happy with my estimate and I’m also happy to round it down to $300k to align with Cathie’s bearish case and for the ease of math. Because of bitcoin’s large price variation within-year, I wouldn’t consider a miss on the $81k even by 50% to invalidate the projection, but if we do break $150k this year or $200k next year then I would reconsider to the upside. Let’s round the $178k projection to $180k and I would invalidate in either direction if I were off by $60k or 1/3, towards the $216k or $710k in 2029 or 2030 proposed by other analysts.

I could:

1. Buy bitcoin directly

2. Mine bitcoin

3. Make a derivative bet: ETFs, futures, or options

4. Buy a stock or index of miners such as MNRS or WGMI

5. Buy a stock or index of treasury companies like MSTR

My projections would have bitcoin 6X from $50k in 2026 to $300k in 2029, which looks like a CAGR of 82%, handily beating the previously mentioned FNGO play.

As previously discussed, effective leverage from ETFs and futures is 2-3.5x, with options potentially getting to 5x. Going with a 2X ETF, I could potentially 10X by 2029 instead of achieving only 6X.

Here’s a comparison of tickers. These tickers have not all existed for 3 years and MSTR has been through very interesting changes, so any analysis will generate some risk. Over the past year, the miner ETFs have done better than bitcoin direct ownership and MSTR, though on a longer time horizon MSTR has done very well. Miner stocks appeared to act as a gain multiplier over the past year until the bitcoin price peak, then their prices fell more slowly. There are also notably some MSTR leveraged ETFs called MSTU and MSTZ.

This is potentially bullish, indicating possible multiplied upside with reduced downside, but it’s also possibly a bull trap in that the reduced downside might have included structural changes that prevent them from rising rapidly in the future.

It’s a gamble, but it seems interesting to allocate some capital to that gamble. This could be even more interesting if brokers offer margin capital for MSTR, WGMI, and MNRS because they often don’t offer margin for BITX as a leveraged fund. Hypothetically, if a basket of those three grew at 2X compared to bitcoin and could be bought at 2X margin leverage, there’s a chance to 20X the input capital from 2026 to 2029.

I’m highly confident that bitcoin will increase in price and that a leveraged ETF will generate greater return than direct ownership, so that would be my main position. I would have a smaller allocation for the treasury and miner ETF plays as well as opportunistic options plays. I would tentatively allocate these at a 4:1:1 ratio.

I’m expecting to have a portfolio value of at least $50k when the 2026 bitcoin low is achieved some time between this month and October. I would allocate $18k-$39k if I do not have a line of sight to the QQQ market shape, and I would potentially allocate as little as $12k if I thought that the QQQ low was nearly simultaneous with the bitcoin low and I wanted to enter both positions.

Perhaps I would enter a position around an FOMC meeting since there seems to be a pattern of negative returns in the 48 hours following seven of eight FOMC meetings.