Core Question

Could BTC ever reach $1,000,000, and if not, what could be the highest physically possible?

The answer

BTC is currently trading at about $85,000 as of the time of writing this article. We all know that BTC has a max of 21 million tokens. However, the max would be more like 16-17 million due to lost wallets, thrown away drives, and forgotten wallets from bitcoin's early days. However, its marketcap is about $1.7 trillion when counting for 21 million tokens, since technically, they are all still there, just inaccessible. But anyways, what would it take for BTC to reach $1 million?

In order to reach $1 million, bitcoin would need to reach a marketcap of $21 trillion. When we look at the total money supply (not assets) of the world, it is at roughly $150 trillion, so $21 trillion represents about 14% of that. That is a huge chunk of the world's money to be put into one asset, and crypto none the less. That means that about 14% of all the available money needs to be in bitcoin, which is impossible. I am not counting assets, because in the hypothetical case that everyone has their cash on hand in order to invest in bitcoin, there will not be enough cash to actually buy your assets, since people have it in bitcoin.

However, we do have to account for inflation, and the fact that more people will be born up to the year 2100, where it will peak at about 10 billion people before slowly declining. We can assume a 3.5% inflation (conservative weighted average) from today, which puts the total money supply at $3 quadrillion in 2100. $21 trillion is .7% of that. So bitcoin will probably actually reach $1 million from purely inflation, not counting for any regulatory shifts, investors changes, or broad macroeconimics change. And, I would put the likelihood of this at a few decades. But definitely not like 2030 headlines or other shorterm predictions, as that is practically impossible unless something big happens. 

Gains or not gains?

While bitcoin reaching $1 million seems great, we do have to keep in mind you are making less than what it is up due to inflation. Bitcoin could gain 12x from now until 2100, which seems like a win, however, when factoring in all the inflation (which is coumpound interest mechanism), you still lose/barely break even.

DISCLAIMER

I am not a financial advisor. This article is for educational purpose only and should not be treated as your only source on bitcoin information and predictions. Always perform your own research before investing. I hold no responsibility for any loses.