🥛 PRO | Can Bitcoin still deliver big gains? 🚀

GM! Welcome to Milk Road PRO – your weekly dose of balanced, nutrient-rich crypto takes.

Let’s shake things up…

Imagine you don’t own any crypto. 💸

(Hard to picture, we know, but just give it a go).

Maybe you’re a little skeptical of it all? Maybe you don’t quite understand it? Maybe it’s just not your thing? 

But you still want to invest – and you’re looking to, at the very least, outpace inflation.

Sound familiar? It should. 

Chances are, your coworker, your neighbor, or even your barber thinks in a similar way. 

Everyone wants to grow their money, but who has the time to track market trends, analyze risks, and find new opportunities? Most people don’t. 

So, what do they do? They leave it to financial advisors to handle the heavy lifting.

These advisors comb through various asset classes—technology stocks (QQQ), U.S. blue chips (SPY), gold (GLD), real estate (VNG), U.S. treasuries (TLT), and now, Bitcoin (BTC)—to build the best investment mix for you. 📈

But there’s one asset that has been blowing everything else out of the water.

Bitcoin has surged over 526% since 2018, putting every other asset class to shame.

And here’s the kicker: we chose 2018 deliberately because it was one of Bitcoin’s “worst” years. 

If we had picked almost any other starting point, the numbers would be even wilder! So even when starting from a low, Bitcoin’s message is loud and clear.

Yes, Bitcoin comes with volatility, but here’s the reality: 

If you had held Bitcoin for at least 3 years, there hasn’t been a single period where it wouldn’t have outperformed every other asset class. That’s a strong signal, no?🤩

We didn’t lead today with Trump calling Bitcoin a U.S. strategic asset or countries mining Bitcoin, or even massive corporations constantly adding it to their balance sheets. Those are huge milestones, but let’s be honest—they don’t get people hooked. 

Right now, we wanted to give you the one thing that’s hard to ignore: performance. Numbers that create FOMO. (You’re feeling it, right? 🤗)

And you know what? We feel it too. It’s natural—emotions are part of the game. But here’s the thing: we can’t let them drive our long-term decisions. 

The key is to stay grounded and keep the bigger picture in mind. 

What we want to answer today is:

Will Bitcoin continue to deliver huge returns?

Will it continue to be one of the best investments in the world?

As some of you know, we don’t currently hold any Bitcoin in our MR PRO Portfolio. That’s not because we don’t like it (we love it), it’s because our goal is to outperform it (which lately, has not been an easy thing to do). 😅

That said, we’re always reviewing the landscape, analyzing insights from the big players, and constantly asking ourselves if it’s time to reconsider our portfolio.

By taking in the perspectives of the heavyweights and blending them with our own strategy, we aim to make unbiased, rational moves—not emotional ones.

At the end of this report, we will share our price prediction of Bitcoin by 2030 as well as what we’re planning to do with Bitcoin in the Milk Road PRO Portfolio.

Does Bitcoin still have a bright future with the potential to continue delivering impressive returns?

To find out, we dug into reports from two highly respected asset managers—Ark Invest and VanEck—and we’re excited to share their insights.

• Ark Invest: Bitcoin as an Investment

• Vaneck: Bitcoin 2050 Valuation Scenarios

You might be wondering why don’t we just do our own analysis? Well, it’s because Bitcoin is in a league of its own. 

At $1.2 trillion, it's the giant of the crypto world, and the forces needed to push an asset of this magnitude even higher are beyond what we can confidently estimate. 

Instead, we’ll dive into the insights from two heavyweight reports and layer in our own commentary to give you the best possible perspective!

First up is Ark's Bitcoin report from 2020, which we believe was one of the first institutional-grade reports to project a Bitcoin price.

Four years ago, when Bitcoin was trading at just $10k with a market cap of $220 billion, Ark Invest released a bold report predicting $BTC could potentially 15x to $150k (a $3 trillion market cap) between 2025 and 2030. 

Fast forward to today—Bitcoin sits at $65k with a market cap of $1.3 trillion, and many now predict it could reach $150k-$180k as soon as next year, driven by the current economic cycle.

(What once seemed improbable now feels much more within reach).

ARK’s spot-on prediction made us revisit their report to understand how they arrived at such a bold forecast when few others were so optimistic.

It’s impressive how they saw potential that many overlooked back then. 🫡

The second report we’re diving into comes from VanEck, published just a year ago. 

VanEck has been making waves in the crypto space recently, sharing their bullish views and actively helping to educate the market.

This report, released in September 2024, comes three years after Ark Invest's. 

With Ark's predictions looking more and more accurate, we wanted to bring in a fresh perspective from another respected, crypto-friendly firm. 

By comparing the insights from both reports, we can spot similarities and differences that might help us uncover new trends or unique opportunities.

Here’s a quick rundown of what you’ll discover today:

• How did Ark Invest come up with their bold Bitcoin prediction?

• What’s VanEck’s ambitious price target for Bitcoin by 2050?

• What key trends and insights did we uncover by comparing these two reports?

• And finally, what’s our price prediction for Bitcoin in 2030?

We’re kicking things off with a report from Ark Invest, a firm with $6.8 billion in assets under management (AUM) that specializes in cutting-edge technologies like AI, robotics, and blockchain.

Ark has pinpointed four major opportunities for Bitcoin to capture market share and projected how each could boost its market cap.

We'll break down Ark’s predictions and follow up with our own comments to keep things exciting.

BITCOIN AS A SETTLEMENT NETWORK

ARK envisions Bitcoin becoming a global settlement network—far more than just digital gold. It could transform how banks and businesses settle transactions.

Here’s why:

• Always on, borderless: Unlike traditional systems like Fedwire, Bitcoin operates 24/7, globally, without the need for intermediaries. It allows for direct, peer-to-peer transactions, cutting out middlemen and making cross-border settlements faster and cheaper.

• Censorship resistance: Bitcoin is censorship-resistant. No third party can block or reverse a transaction, giving users full control over their financial sovereignty—unlike traditional systems subject to regulatory oversight.

• Massive potential: The U.S. alone generates $1.3 quadrillion in settlement volume annually. If Bitcoin captures just 10% of that market, it could push its market cap to $1.5 trillion.

In short, Bitcoin as a global settlement network isn’t just a concept—it could be the future of how value moves across the world.

BITCOIN AS A SAFEGUARD AGAINST ASSET SEIZURE

ARK Invest sees Bitcoin as a shield against asset seizure, particularly in regions where property rights are weak or government intervention is high.

Here are the reasons:

• Seizure resistance: Bitcoin operates without a central authority, meaning no government can control or confiscate your assets. With proper key management, your wealth stays under your control.

• Inflation protection: Governments often seize wealth indirectly through inflation. When fiat currencies are devalued, Bitcoin’s fixed supply acts as a hedge, protecting wealth from currency debasement.

• Market opportunity: If people allocated just 5% of the global monetary base (excluding major currencies) to Bitcoin as a hedge against asset seizure, Bitcoin’s market cap could rise to $2.5 trillion.

Bitcoin offers a lifeline for individuals in unstable regions, providing a decentralized and secure way to store wealth beyond the reach of governments and inflation. 🔒

BITCOIN AS A DIGITAL GOLD

Bitcoin is positioning itself as the digital counterpart to gold. ARK Invest sees Bitcoin not just as a rival, but as a more efficient, secure alternative.

Here’s how Bitcoin stacks up:

• Scarcity & durability: Like gold, Bitcoin is scarce and durable. But it goes further by solving gold’s biggest limitations: it’s easily divisible, portable, and transferable in the digital economy.

• Verifiability & security: Unlike gold, which requires effort to verify, Bitcoin’s authenticity is instantly verified through the blockchain, making it more secure and harder to steal.

• Market opportunity: With a global gold market worth $10 trillion (it is now $18 trillion), Bitcoin could capture a slice of this. If Bitcoin secures just 10%, its market cap could soar by $1 trillion.

As economies shift toward digital assets, Bitcoin is well-positioned to become the go-to vehicle for wealth preservation, directly competing with physical gold.

BITCOIN AS A HEDGE IN EMERGING MARKETS

Bitcoin’s true power shines in emerging markets, where currencies often collapse due to poor economic policies. 

ARK Invest believes Bitcoin is a critical hedge against inflation in these regions.

Here’s why:

• Protection from currency devaluation: In countries where hyperinflation erodes local currencies, Bitcoin serves as a stable store of value, offering an alternative to fiat money.

• Decentralized & borderless: Bitcoin operates beyond the control of governments, providing financial freedom to individuals in unstable economies.

• Market opportunity: If Bitcoin captures just 5% of the global monetary base in emerging markets, its market cap could climb to $1.2 trillion.

Bitcoin could become a lifeline for millions facing economic uncertainty, offering a safe way to preserve and grow wealth. 💰

PS: You may have noticed that Ark used the same 5% estimate in both the asset seizure and emerging markets scenarios. However, for asset seizure, they applied it to the global monetary base, while for the hedge in emerging markets, they focused specifically on the monetary base of emerging countries only, which explains the difference in final figures.

ARK'S KEY TAKEAWAYS