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Bitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus Thielen

cointelegraph.com · Aug 15, 2026 at 13:30

Bitcoin to $1M by 2030 is ‘mathematically impossible’ says Markus Thielen
cointelegraph.com Aug 15, 2026

The trillions required to boost Bitcoin to a price of $1 million per coin is not going to happen by 2030... or perhaps ever, says party pooper Markus Thielen.

The numbers behind the oft-cited prediction that Bitcoin will reach $1 million by 2030 simply don’t add up, according to Markus Thielen, head of research at 10x Research.

“It’s mathematically impossible,” Thielen tells Cointelegraph on Trade Secrets, arguing that Bitcoin’s historical capital inflows over the past 15 years fall far short of the amount it 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,” Thielen says.

At the time of publication, Bitcoin’s market cap is around $1.28 trillion, with its price trading at $63,868, 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. This is equivalent to roughly 25% of the US stock market’s total value flowing into Bitcoin over the next four years.

“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 says.

Bitcoin is down 2.35% over the past 30 days. (CoinMarketCap)

Thielen says 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?” Thielen says. “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,” Thielen says.

He warns Bitcoiners not just to expect Bitcoin to rebound as it has in previous cycles, and the $126,000 all-time high 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 says.

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