7 Bitcoin valuation models: from $500,000 to $24 million

Are you willing to hold Bitcoin for 4 years to $500,000? It has increased 90 times in the past 10 years. Where will it go in the next 10 or even 20 years?

The price of Bitcoin has recently reached $69,000 again. With the continuous release of crypto-positive news in the US election and the loosening of the US economy, it has become a consensus among more and more people that the price will break through the $100,000 mark next year.

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said in a recent interview that Bitcoin will reach 13 million US dollars in 2045, which means that the average annual growth rate will reach 29% in the next 21 years.

As a long-term investor/hodler, I am more curious about what are the valuation models of Bitcoin? What will be the trend of long-term value? So I collected and sorted out 7 common valuation models, which also gave the behavior of 'HODL' more theoretical support.

If you are also interested in Bitcoin's valuation model, then enjoy!

1. Valuation Model 1: Gold Substitutes

2. Valuation Model 2: Global Asset Alternatives

3. Valuation Model 3: Stock to Flow Model

4. Valuation Model 4: Long Term Power Law

5. Valuation Model 5: Celebrity Calls

6. Valuation Model 6: US Dollar Inflation Model

7. Valuation Model 7: Based on Production Cost

Valuation Model 1: Gold Substitutes

This is also the most common method of valuing Bitcoin. With a constant quantity and resistance to inflation, Bitcoin has become a new medium for "value storage", and its counterpart in the old world is gold.

As a long-term "store of value" target, gold has been accepted by the whole world and has become an asset that transcends national boundaries; Bitcoin, as digital gold, started from the geek community and has gained some consensus among many young people, new money, and wealthy asset systems (the passage of BTC ETF this year further strengthened the consensus), replacing part of the "store of value" role previously undertaken by gold.

Currently (October 18, 2024), the market value of gold is $18.3 trillion, and the unit price of Bitcoin is $67,819, with a market value of $1.34 trillion (the number of mined coins is currently 19.76 million, which is very close to the total of 21 million). It ranks as the tenth largest asset in the world, accounting for 7.3% of gold. I have listed below the corresponding price of Bitcoin when this ratio increases:

• 10%：$92,523

• 15%: $138,784

• 33%: $305,325

• 100%：$925,226（Fully reaching the same market value as gold）

10% is the historical high point of the [Bitcoin/gold] market value ratio. If the penetration rate increases further, it can reach 15%, which means that the high point of this round may be around 140,000 US dollars.

Why is the ratio of 33% released? Because the value of gold is not entirely "value storage". In fact, more than half of it is used for decoration, 10% is used for industrial purposes, and only 1/3 is used for investment + reserve. Because Bitcoin has no decorative or industrial use, if there are no other variables, 33% may be the maximum ratio, at which Bitcoin reaches about 300,000 US dollars.

If one day Bitcoin reaches the same market value as gold, the unit price will reach nearly 1 million US dollars.

Valuation Model 2: Global Asset Alternatives

Is $1 million the end of Bitcoin?

The answer is of course No.

In addition to gold, we also use currency and real estate to store value. The following estimates come from the famous Nine Gods' "Hoarding Bitcoin" (the estimated time point is 2018):

• The total market value of global gold is $7.7 trillion, the total amount of broad money is $90.4 trillion, and real estate is

  217 trillion U.S. dollars.

• The broad definition of money includes cash, fixed and demand deposits, securities company customer deposits, etc. In addition to cash (accounting for 8%) for circulation, the rest is used for value storage.

• The main purpose of real estate is probably to live in and use it, but a considerable proportion is certainly used for storing value. If it weren’t for Bitcoin, I would have used most of my funds to buy a house. Since there is no ratio to check, we temporarily assume that 20% of real estate is used for storing value (this ratio does not affect the order of magnitude of the final result).

So, how big is the global total stored value market? 7.7 + 90.4 × 92% + 217 × 20% = 134 trillion US dollars.

The total number of Bitcoins is only 21 million, and about 3 million are permanently lost. Considering the absolute advantage of Bitcoin in value storage over gold, currency and real estate, each Bitcoin will rise to $ 7.5 million.

$ 134 trillion / $18 million = $ 7.5 million

Is that the end? Of course not.

The total amount of world wealth is growing at an annual rate of 6% . In 10 years, the total amount will be 1.8 times the current amount, and in 20 years, the total amount will be 3.2 times the current amount. Therefore, assuming that the value storage function of Bitcoin is widely recognized in 20 years (2038), its price should be 24 million US dollars, or 160 million RMB.

Of course, this is the case when Bitcoin occupies 100% of the global total storage market. If it reaches 10% of the market share, the price of Bitcoin will reach 2.4 million US dollars, or 16 million RMB, in 2038.

For the most radical version [RMB 160 million], Jiushen also made linear and exponential price models:

• Linear growth” (actually not linear in mathematics): the growth multiple is the same in each cycle;

• “Exponential decreasing”: the growth multiple is high at the beginning and low later.

The above prediction was made in 2018. At the end of 2021, the price of Bitcoin did reach $64,863, about 450,000 RMB, which is quite close to Jiushen’s prediction. Will this cycle reach 3.4 million RMB / 500,000 USD as shown in the table?

By the way, another great contribution of Jiushen is the invention of the famous Jiushen Hoarding Index, which guides fixed investment and bottom-fishing (I use this indicator myself):

ahr999 = (Bitcoin price/200-day fixed investment cost) * (Bitcoin price/index growth valuation)

• Exponential growth valuation = 10^[5.84 * log(coinage) - 17.01]

• Coin Age = the number of days from the current date to the Bitcoin Genesis Block (January 3, 2009)

Backtesting based on indicators

• When the ahr999 indicator data is lower than 0.45, it may be suitable for bottom fishing;

• It may be suitable to invest in BTC between 0.45 and 1.2

• If it is above this range, it means that this may not be a good time to make a fixed investment.

Valuation Model 3: Stock to Flow Model

In 2019, Twitter user PlanB added the consideration of "scarcity" to the "gold substitute" and proposed the Stock to Flow Model.

We describe this model in three parts:

1. Scarce goods can be used to store value and play the role of currency.

2. Scarcity can be quantified by the Stock-to-Flow Ratio;

3. Final Modeling

1. Scarce goods can be used to store value and play the role of currency

This should be self-explanatory, so I’ll just quote the words of cypherpunk pioneer Nick Szabo from the article:

What do antiques, time, and gold have in common? They are all expensive, either because of their original cost or because their history is unpredictable and difficult to counterfeit.

Precious metals and collectibles have an unforgeable scarcity due to their expensive manufacturing costs. This has historically provided value to currencies, whose value is largely independent of any trusted third party.

Therefore, it would be great if there was a protocol that could create unforgeable expensive bits online with minimal reliance on a trusted third party, and then securely store, transfer, and verify them with similar minimal trust as Bitcoin Gold.

btw, Nick Szabo is suspected to be Satoshi Nakamoto due to his similar professional background and writing style, but he has denied it many times.

2. Scarcity can be quantified by the Stock-to-Flow Ratio

Bitcoin scholar Saifedean Ammous further introduced the concept of Stock-to-Flow Ratio to quantify scarcity

As with any consumable good, a doubling of production would dwarf existing stocks, sending prices plunging and hurting holders.

For gold, a doubling of annual production as a result of a price surge would be negligible, increasing reserves by just 3%.

It is precisely because of gold's continued low supply rate that it has maintained its monetary role throughout human history.

Gold's high [ stock-to-flow ratio] makes it the commodity with the least elastic supply.

The existing reserves of Bitcoin in 2017 are about 25 times the amount of new Bitcoin created in 2017. This is still less than half of the golden ratio, but by around 2022, Bitcoin’s [ stock-to-flow ratio] will exceed that of gold.

Stock-to-Flow Ratio (SF) = stock / flow

• Stock is the total amount of current goods

• Flow refers to the annual supply of the current product.

The author gives the inventory-to-flow ratio of several commodities at that time (2019.3.23) in the article:

Gold has the highest SF of 62, requiring 62 years of production to obtain the current gold reserves. Silver is second with a SF of 22. This high SF makes them both monetary commodities.

Palladium, platinum and all other commodities have SFs above 1. On-hand stocks are usually equal to or less than annual production, making production a very important factor.

It is difficult for commodities to get a higher SF because once people hoard them, the price goes up, production goes up, and the price goes down again. It is difficult to escape this trap.

Bitcoin currently has a supply of 17.5 million and a yearly supply of 700,000 = SF 25. This puts Bitcoin in the category of monetary commodities like silver and gold. Bitcoin's market value at current prices ($4,000) is $70 billion.

It can also be seen from the table above that SF is proportional to the value of such commodities, and the halving of Bitcoin will cause the SF of Bitcoin to continue to rise, thereby increasing its value.

Indeed, according to Biteye statistics,

Bitcoin's stock-to-flow ratio is: 19750000 / 164359 ≈ 120.1 ( August 2024 )

The stock-to-flow ratio of gold is: 209,000 / 3,500 ≈ 59.7 (2023)

The stock-to-flow ratio of gold is not much different from that of 2019, but that of Bitcoin has increased by more than 3 times and is currently twice that of gold! In other words, the scarcity of Bitcoin is about twice that of gold. How will this be reflected in the value prediction of Bitcoin?

3. Final Modeling

PlanB's model assumes that scarcity represented by SF directly drives Bitcoin value.

Skipping the derivation process in the middle, the final formula is: Market value = exp(14.6) * SF ^ 3.3 (a power law distribution)

It can be seen that this Stock-to-Flow model has been quite accurate in predictions since it was proposed on March 23, 2019, until May 2021, and then there was a situation where the predicted price was much higher than the actual price.

According to this model, the current predicted price is $250,000?

However, the author did predict that the price would reach $55,000 within one to two years after the halving in May 2020, and the market value of Bitcoin would exceed 1 trillion US dollars (March 9, 2021), which also made Plan B famous on Twitter.

And he also predicted where all the money needed for a $1 trillion Bitcoin market cap would come from:

My answer: Silver, Gold, countries with negative interest rates (Europe, Japan, and soon the US), predatory governments (Venezuela, China, Iran, Turkey, etc.), billionaires and millionaires hedging against quantitative easing (QE), and institutional investors discovering the best performing assets of the past 10 years.

Plan B himself still stands by his prediction

After the halving in 2024, Bitcoin will reach $500,000 by 2028, and its market value will reach more than $10 trillion

Will it happen? We'll have to wait and see.

Valuation Model 4: Long Term Power Law Long-term power law prediction method

After PlanB proposed the Stock-to-Flow model in 2019, many people also noticed the time power law distribution of Bitcoin prices at the same time, and Harold Christopher Burger was one of them. He studied for a doctorate at the Max Planck Institute and is now an artificial intelligence expert.

He published an article titled “ Bitcoin’s natural long-term power-law corridor of growth” on September 3, 2019, which made long-term predictions on the market tops and bottoms of Bitcoin prices:

• The Bitcoin price will reach $100,000 per Bitcoin between 2021 and 2028, and after 2028, the price will never be less than $100,000.

• The Bitcoin price will reach $1 million per Bitcoin between 2028 and 2037, and after 2037, the price will never fall below $1 million.

This model is pretty easy to understand:

1. For Bitcoin's price-time distribution, after taking the logarithm of both the y-axis (price) and the x-axis (time), it can be fitted using linear regression.

2. Shifting the above fitted line slightly downward (but not changing the slope) we get the support line for the Bitcoin price;

3. Performing a linear regression on only the three highest points achieved in 2011, 2013 and 2017, we obtain a power law line for the market top;

4. Bitcoin price fluctuates between two power-law lines: a lower support line and an upper line defined by three market highs.

The power of this model lies in the fact that the data for the five years after it was proposed (September 2019-September 2024) are still within its prediction range, so it seems that it is not far from $100,000.

Valuation Model 5: Celebrity Calls

I must admit that this part is quite entertaining, and is more of a record of an era. Here are three representative ones:

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood predicted in January 2024 that Bitcoin will grow to $1.5 million by 2030.

Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey predicted in May 2024 that it would break the $1 million mark by the end of 2030.

MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor said in a recent interview that Bitcoin will reach 13 million US dollars in 2045, which means that the average annual growth rate in the next 21 years will reach 29%.

However, although it is entertainment, the crypto market still has a strong reflexivity, and celebrity orders will indeed affect local prices at some special times.

Valuation Model 6: US Dollar Inflation Model

source: https://www.tastycrypto.com/blog/bitcoin-price-predictions/

If we make price forecasts in 10-year units, we must take into account the impact of US dollar inflation, which can lead to significant increases in asset prices.

Unlike Bitcoin, the U.S. dollar is an inflationary asset, and the Fed's inflation target is 2%. However, we are not robots, and it is challenging to fully control the economy. Central banks often print more money by lowering interest rates to stimulate economic growth, especially in difficult times like the epidemic.
That's why we have surging inflation, with annual inflation at 8%, the highest in about 40 years.

The purchasing power of the dollar is decreasing due to rising inflation. $100 in 1984 is worth more than $300 today.

Considering this factor alone, Bitcoin, with its current price of $69,400 (2024.4), could reach around $200,000 by 2050, without considering other fundamental factors.
(I think many celebrities' predictions also take inflation into account)

In fact, if the U.S. dollar loses its status as the world’s reserve currency, which could happen due to current tectonic geopolitical changes , this could lead to hyperinflation (although extremely unlikely), pricing Bitcoin to astronomical levels.

Valuation Model 7: Based on Production Cost

This is also easy to understand. For miners, Bitcoin is a business that generates cash flow and profits. The shutdown price of mining machines often marks the bottom price for a period of time and can be used to guide bottom fishing (but it is difficult to use it to guide price increases).