Bitcoin's oft-cited path to $1 million by 2030 does not add up, according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research — the crypto analytics firm he founded — who says the forecast cannot be supported by the numbers.

"It's mathematically impossible," Thielen told Cointelegraph on Trade Secrets, arguing that Bitcoin's historical capital inflows over the past 15 years fall far short of what the asset would need to attract over the next four years to reach $1 million. "We have seen $1 trillion US dollars of inflow to bring the market cap really to $1 trillion. To $1 million [per] Bitcoin. It's 15x, I think, from here," he said.

At the time of publication, Bitcoin traded at $63,868 with a market capitalization of roughly $1.28 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. Thielen estimates that Bitcoin would need to attract another $15 trillion in capital to reach a per-Bitcoin price of $1 million — equivalent to roughly 25% of the US stock market's total value flowing into Bitcoin over the next four years. For scale, that figure is hundreds of times larger than the roughly $35 billion in net inflows that United States spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds — approved in January 2024 and one of the most successful ETF debuts on record — attracted in their first year.

"It would require trillions"

"It takes trillions and trillions of dollars to move the price really materially higher, and that's why we are not as bullish as those arguments which we think are totally mathematically unrealistic because it would require trillions," Thielen said.

Bitcoin's market capitalization is calculated by applying the last traded price to all roughly 19.9 million coins mined to date, so every leg higher revalues the entire outstanding supply — the arithmetic behind why the capital sums involved climb into the trillions as valuations grow.

Bitcoin is down 2.35% over the past 30 days, per CoinMarketCap.

Thielen also observed that the higher Bitcoin's price goes, the weaker retail sentiment becomes — partly due to the psychology of investors wanting to own a whole unit of an asset.

"I think a lot of people kind of wondered, maybe I should just rather buy a new car than buy one Bitcoin, or should I really work a whole year for just one Bitcoin?" he said. "People don't want to buy a tenth or a hundredth of a Bitcoin; they want to buy a whole Bitcoin. You don't want to buy a fraction of a painting."

"Satoshis doesn't really sound as interesting as Bitcoin," he added. A satoshi, named after Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, is the cryptocurrency's smallest unit: one hundred millionth of a single Bitcoin.

He warned Bitcoiners not to expect Bitcoin to rebound automatically as it has in previous cycles, noting that the $126,000 all-time high — set in October 2025 — may not reappear as quickly as investors expect.

"Usually, it takes some time because we are at a higher market cap, and that usually takes a lot of money to push the Bitcoin price higher. So I wouldn't argue that next year we're gonna see new highs. If we go back to, let's say, $100K, that would already be, I think, a big, big achievement," Thielen said.

$1 million Bitcoin has been touted by well-known industry executives

The prediction that Bitcoin will reach $1 million by 2030 has been made by prominent industry figures, including Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood. ARK has published bull-case scenarios above $1 million by 2030 in its annual Big Ideas research, while Dorsey has pointed to the end of the decade for his own seven-figure call. Thielen argues that such bold forecasts are an easy way for executives to generate media attention.

"Round numbers and the higher the number, the more it's being quoted by the press," Thielen said, arguing that extravagant predictions tend to do more harm than good.

"These optimistic price targets tend to hurt retail investors because they sort of think, OK, if this is only halfway right, then I'm gonna make a lot of money," he said.

Reflecting on his firm's own positioning, Thielen said: "I think nearly everybody was still very bullish and projected higher prices [but] we came into the year already quite conservative, and you know, I think our conservative approach has been the right strategy."

Asked by Cointelegraph in which year Bitcoiners might reasonably expect Bitcoin to reach $1 million, Thielen declined to name a date. "I don't want to say never, but I do think, you know, a million is really a high number," he said.

"It would require, you know, a major credit event, implosion of everything."