Another analyst sees Bitcoin hitting $1M within five years

By TheStreet Roundtable

about 1 hour ago

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Investment firm VanEck believes Bitcoin could climb to $1 million within the next five years as younger investors continue increasing their exposure to the cryptocurrency market.

Speaking to CNBC on May 6, Matthew Sigel, VanEck head of digital assets research, said a seven-figure Bitcoin price is possible over the coming years despite the asset’s history of sharp market swings.

“Half a decade, I think is possible,” Sigel said when asked how long it could take for Bitcoin to hit $1 million.

"... you look at the demographic trends and the intentions of young investors to allocate to Bitcoin."

Bitcoin has never traded much higher than $126,000, making the forecast highly optimistic. Still, several crypto industry executives and analysts have recently made similar predictions.

A growing chorus at $1 million

Last month, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said Bitcoin could eventually reach $1 million. On Wednesday at Consensus Miami, Eric Trump said the cryptocurrency would surpass the same milestone.

Back in 2024, VanEck CEO Jan van Eck told CNBC that Bitcoin could rise to $300,000. The firm has now more than tripled that target.

It is worth noting that many of the loudest bullish voices in crypto have business interests directly tied to Bitcoin's performance. Eric Trump co-founded American Bitcoin, a Bitcoin mining and treasury company. VanEck manages several Bitcoin ETFs. Bitwise runs the third-largest spot Bitcoin ETF. None of that makes them wrong — but it's context worth carrying.

VanEck compares Bitcoin adoption to video game industry growth

During the interview, Sigel compared Bitcoin's growing adoption curve to the evolution of the video game industry over the past several decades.

"It's going to be like the video game industry, where 30 years ago it was just kids playing video games, now Elon Musk plays video games," he said. "People don't quit, they also don't quit Bitcoin."

Sigel also pointed to increasing institutional and government interest in Bitcoin, adding that at least one central bank is now buying Bitcoin for reserves.

"So this is a mega trend, but it's gonna be very volatile along the way and we're trying to smooth out some of that volatility," he said.

Short covering, not euphoria

While VanEck remains optimistic about Bitcoin’s long-term outlook, Sigel said current market activity appears heavily tied to broader macroeconomic conditions.

According to him, Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq has climbed to its highest level in five years, suggesting the recent rally is closely linked to wider market movements.

“Right now, Bitcoin's correlation with the NASDAQ has actually reached a five-year high, so a lot of this is a macro move,” Sigel said.

He added that VanEck is not seeing excessive speculation in derivatives markets, which the firm views as a positive sign for the current rally.

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“What keeps us encouraged, even at current levels, is that we're not seeing the froth in derivatives markets,” he said.

Sigel said activity in options and futures markets suggests the recent price increase is being driven largely by short covering rather than aggressive bullish positioning.

“If you look at the options markets, the futures markets, to us, it still looks like this is a short covering rally, which means positioning is negative,” he said.

In simpler words, traders who bet against Bitcoin are being forced to buy it back as prices rise, which is driving the rally. That's different from a flood of new bullish money pouring in — and historically, short-covering rallies tend to be more sustainable than hype-driven ones because they start from a base of skepticism rather than greed.

Bitcoin miners and the AI gold rush

Sigel also highlighted strong gains among Bitcoin mining stocks, particularly companies expanding into artificial intelligence infrastructure.

"The big move is really in the miners today," he said. "Those are the stocks that are up, you know, five percent plus."

He specifically mentioned Hut 8, which closed Tuesday up 35% at an all-time high of $108.94. The surge was driven by a $9.8 billion, 15-year AI data center lease at its Beacon Point campus in Texas — with options that could lift the total value to roughly $25.1 billion. The 352-megawatt deal will support AI training and inference workloads for an investment-grade tenant.

Hut 8 now holds 597 megawatts of contracted AI data center capacity worth approximately $16.8 billion — a remarkable pivot for a company that started as a pure-play Bitcoin miner.

"There's a really virtuous cycle going on right now between the convergence of AI and Bitcoin," Sigel said.

The logic is that Bitcoin miners have spent years building out power infrastructure and cooling systems in low-cost locations. Those are exactly the assets that AI companies now need for training and running large language models. The result is that mining companies sitting on cheap power capacity are suddenly sitting on some of the most valuable real estate in tech.