Bitwise's Matt Hougan Calls $1.3 Million Bitcoin by 2035 'Relatively Easy' as Simply Bitcoin Hosts Turn Bullish Near $80,000
Bitcoin traded near $80,000 this week, and the bull posting that disappeared for months is back on Simply Bitcoin. Hosts pointed to a stack of on-chain metrics, a fresh super cycle debate, and a long-term call from one of the industry's most-watched asset managers.
THE $1.3 MILLION CASE
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan reiterated his firm's long-standing forecast that Bitcoin could reach $1.3 million per coin by 2035. "I think $1.3 million by 2035 is going to be relatively easy for Bitcoin," Hougan said. He also said Bitcoin could reclaim $100,000 in 2026, and on Simply Bitcoin he added that Wall Street returning from its August break, combined with crypto "forming a nice bottom," sets up a favorable window for fresh allocations.
The long-range number is not a guess pulled from thin air. Hougan's $1.3 million Bitcoin price target by 2035 rests on bitcoin taking a 25% share of an expanding store-of-value market, using gold as the comparison. Gold's market capitalization has risen from about $2 trillion when gold ETFs launched in 2004 to roughly $30 trillion today, and if that market keeps expanding at its historical 13% annual pace for another decade, bitcoin reaching a quarter of it would put each coin at $1.3 million.
ON-CHAIN SIGNS OF A BOTTOM
Host Optimist Opti walked through a batch of on-chain data alongside Sazmining CEO Kent Halliburton, pointing to whale accumulation near the $80,000 level and a fear and greed index that has swung from extreme fear back toward the middle of the range. He also cited CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju's "strong buy" consensus reading and said the accumulation pattern on CryptoQuant's charts lines up with what Wyckoff-style accumulation theory would predict heading into a breakout. Halliburton said his own confidence that the bottom was in moved sharply after Bitcoin's price jump last month. He argued the setup now favors long-term buyers on a risk-adjusted basis, since the market has already worked through most of its downside without the euphoria that would normally precede a bigger drop.
HOW MANY PEOPLE ACTUALLY OWN BITCOIN
The hosts also debated a global adoption estimate that Opti attributed to a River report, putting worldwide ownership in the range of four to five percent of the population. That figure tracks with River's own published research: only four per cent of people on Earth own Bitcoin according to a new report from Bitcoin analytics firm, River Financial, with North America having the highest rate at 14 per cent and Africa the lowest at one per cent. Halliburton pushed back hard on the number, arguing that five percent of the global population would be roughly 400 million people, more than the entire population of the United States, and said his own instinct puts real Bitcoin holders well under a million. Whichever number is closer to true, both hosts agreed the low estimate undercuts the idea that diminishing returns are inevitable this cycle.
THE FOUR-YEAR CYCLE DEBATE
Opti and Halliburton spent a chunk of the show picking apart whether Bitcoin's traditional four-year halving cycle still applies. Both noted that Bitcoin set a new all-time high before the most recent halving, something that had never happened in prior cycles, which they see as evidence the old pattern has already started to shift. The conversation echoed a live debate playing out among analysts. On-chain analyst Willy Woo has been arguing that Bitcoin's traditional four-year cycle may be giving way to something closer to the six-to-eight-year debt cycle that traditional markets run on, pointing to BTC's annual issuance already around 0.8%, with spot ETFs and market maturation reducing the weight of that supply shock. Separately, Bitcoin strategist Jesse Myers (Croesus) posted that if the 2022 bear and 2023-25 bull cycle continue to repeat, we have just begun a new 2.5 year bull market, and that the start of a new BTC bull market is not a result of good news arriving, but is primarily a function of the bearish trend running out of steam and sellers.
WHAT COMES NEXT
The next hurdle both hosts flagged is the $83,000 zone, which they described as the level the market needs to clear and hold on a weekly basis before calling the bull run officially underway. Halliburton said the next halving, currently tracked for mid-April 2028, will cut new issuance again and add another round of scarcity to the supply side of the story. For now, the bull case on Simply Bitcoin rests on the same three legs Hougan laid out: an improving regulatory backdrop, growing institutional access through ETFs, and a market that has already absorbed most of its sellers. Whether that adds up to $100,000 this year or $1.3 million by 2035, both figures are now back in the conversation after months of hosts hedging on-air.
This story comes from the Simply Bitcoin Live show. Watch the full episode.
