How Much Higher Will Bitcoin Go? | Mark Yusko’s 2025 Predictions

I know there are some now saying that, you know, because of Trump and because of the Bitcoin strategic reserve and you know, there's going to be this massive movement toward accumulating Bitcoin and I'm pretty skeptical of that. I've been doing venture capital in the space for almost seven years. I've never met a Cardano developer, not one. If Ethereum didn't exist and was invented today, would anybody use it?

There anything that surprised you in 2024 that you were not expecting?

Ah, so many things. So many people had their expectations built up positively for the having that we would. You have this parabolic move right after the having and, and that clearly didn't have, didn't happen. You saw a pretty meaningful sell down from, you know, 74,000 all the way down to 53,000. I think that caught a lot of people off guard. On the same day as the approval of the Bitcoin ETFs, the CME released a whole bunch of additional futures products that essentially increase the liquidity pool for people to take the opposite side. Right. You can go short futures, you go long. The ETF have a market neutral trade. But that constant selling in the futures market puts a cap on upward trajectory of prices and even could put downward pressure if somebody else piles on and goes naked short. So this downward relentless pressure finally dissipated in September and we made this really rocket ship move all the way back to new all time highs. And the nice thing is we've seen this accumulation pattern again, higher highs and higher lows.

So according to your view, Trump selection served as the main catalyst that inverted this trend?

Well, no, I know it was an accelerator. I think it was more the tail as opposed to the dog. I think the dog is the fact that there's new money coming into this market. The, the big buyers. Right. Some of the other, you know, global large owners continued to, to buy and the ETF's just relentless buying. But if no one's willing to sell, then the bid has to keep coming up to encourage people to part with their Bitcoin. And I think that's what we're seeing now.

There was another thing that probably surprised you because I remember that back in January you were saying that you were not really expecting an Ethereum ETF in the US to be approved anytime soon. Eventually we saw that happening in the summer, but it didn't seem to have such a big effect, a big success as the Bitcoin etf.

Yeah, no, I, I was a little surprised. You know, I thought Gensler had Been very clear that, that he wasn't going to allow that to happen. But, but just like with the Bitcoin etf, he didn't want that either but eventually he had to relent and I give the, the people a lot of credit for getting that through. But to your point, a surprise was that there wasn't the same follow through in price. There was some demand for the ETF and I think the reason for that is Bitcoin digital gold store of value. That mantra I think is acceptable to big institutional investor, sovereign wealth, et cetera. The eth use case smart contracts platform toolkit. It's like well maybe, but what about this Solana thing and what about this avalanche thing and what about these other things that I hear about that are better and faster and cheaper and you know, so I just don't think there was as much universal acceptance of the use case and the investment thesis as there was for Bitcoin.

Yeah, that, that sounds like the reason by, by the way. Now I would like to talk about your outlook for 2025. So what are the milestones that you are looking forward to in 2025? I'm pretty sure we're going to talk about the Bitcoin strategic reserve but, but maybe you have hope to other.

So look, I, I am still a believer that the four year cycle exists. I know there are some now saying that you know, because of Trump and because of the Bitcoin strategic reserve and you know there's going to be this massive movement toward accumulating Bitcoin and the four year cycle is going to go out the window. I'm, I'm going to bet that humans are going to human. So my expectation for this year was that fair value which post halving was going to be in the you know, 80,000 ish range. Somewhere like that would continue to accrete all the way to somewhere around 100k by where we are today. So to me fair value is right around that, that six digit level. I figured we would blow through that, that six digit number and then humans would human. The humans would come in and they'd start to lever up and, and we'd see a parabolic move probably to 120, maybe even 150. This time in 25 it'll be Aprilish and that would kind of make sense a year after the, the having. So at that point we, we'd hit that, that ebullient level. Then the question is do we get the passage of the strategic Bitcoin reserve? Do we get you know, Tom Lee was on, on CNBC talking about this, saying that, you know, the exchanges don't have enough bitcoin on their, on their platforms and people are going to be scrambling for it. Certainly possible. Could that push us well past that, that 150k range? It's certainly possible. I, I, you know, if you think about a bell curve distribution, to me, the most likely is we get to fair value, we go to call it 50% premium above fair value. So that's in that 150 range. And then unfortunately, we have another bear market starting mid year 2025 and we enter crypto winter again. Now those who think that crypto winter is never going to come again, I'm pretty skeptical of that personally. I mean, history is, you know, it's interesting. I ask people this all the time. Look at parabolic charts. Show me one. And all I want to see is one. No one's ever show me one. Show me a parabolic chart that goes parabolic and then goes flat, a new higher plateau. None of them do that, right? They go parabolic and they keep going parabolic and eventually they go down.

So, so your outlook seemed to me quite realistic if compared to the one we heard from Samson Ma who came on our show lately. He was saying that he expects bitcoin to reach $1 million next year. What can you say about that prediction?

I think Samson's a great, great thinker on this. And I mean, but let's just do some math right now the challenge I have with, with that is a $20 trillion market cap. So we just hit 2 trillion or we're just under 2 trillion. A 10x from here means $20 trillion. Well, $20 trillion. What has to happen for this asset to be worth 20 trillion? So people have said it's digital gold, right? Well, all of the gold in the world above ground is like $12 trillion. Well, only half of that counts because half of it is jewelry and chalices and gold leaf and, and gold bars. That really doesn't count. What? Well, the gold bars, you, because they're part of the monetary base. The monetary value of gold is about 6 trillion. So we're a third of the way there already. So the idea that the monetary base, if gold, if bitcoin is digital gold and it needs to replace the base layer of gold in central banks around the world, 6ish trillion is plenty. Now you say, but that's not all going to be owned by central banks because there's individual holders. Okay, well the, those, those central banks have got to buy it from somebody and those, you know, sellers people say, well, I'm never going to sell. Well, okay, but there's someone's got to sell for someone to buy. That's the way markets work. They can't make more out of thin air like, like fiat currency. So in that environment, Sampson's point is interesting because if I'm a central bank and I say I have to buy 200,000 coins and Tom Lee says there's no one to sell it to me, well then I got to keep bidding the price up. So could you see a parabolic move? Sure. But the problem I, I see with that is if the monetary aggregate base has to increase so much in order to displace gold, what does that do to overall prices of everything? Probably not a very good thing. And what does that do for overall economic activity? Probably not a very good thing. And then what does that do for future demand? So it's all interconnected.

So as a final question, I wanted to get your outlook on altcoins for 2025. Are there any specific altcoins out there who are you excited about?

You know, we don't trade them. In fact I was talking on a show last week about this that we historically don't play in that area. And the reason is our funds. 70% of the money goes into equity of businesses that support the digital asset ecosystem. 30% goes into liquid protocols themselves. But we tend to stay in the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Uniswap, things that we think have a long term future. Kind of the picks and shovels of the digital age. So I have historically been, you know, pretty open minded but pretty anti things like XRP and Cardano and Hedera because I couldn't see anyone building on them like I've yet I've been doing venture capital in the space for almost seven years. I, I've never met a Cardano developer. Not one now I'm sure. And then somebody put out on, on the all you developers call Mark. I still haven't gotten a call. So if you're out there, call me Mike. I struggle with Ethereum a little bit because someone asked me the question, I thought it was a good question. He said if Ethereum didn't exist and was invented today, would anybody use it? It's a very interesting question, right? It's more expensive and slower than the competitors. So if it didn't have this giant installed base because it was first, would people use it? I think the answer is no. It doesn't mean that everyone's going to bail on Ethereum. That's not my point, but it was an interesting perspective. So that explains why Solana and Avalanche and other things have done well.

Mark, it's always a pleasure to have you on our show. I look forward to talk to you again in 2025.

All right, thank you, sir.

Sam.