Bitcoin Valuation by Savings Adoption – Updated 2025 (2023 Adoption Data)

Building on our Fundamental Investment Case for Bitcoin, and our ongoing effort to estimate Bitcoin’s Global Ownership, we continue our work on our ongoing valuation for bitcoin by modelling it as a global savings asset. That is, a scarce, non-yielding, portable, and verifiable store of value that increasingly competes with bank deposits, gold, offshore accounts, real estate, bonds, and even cash under the mattress.

Since this model relies predominantly on measurable inputs, we do our best to periodically update it using available survey data on global bitcoin adoption, as well as any changes to global savings rates offered by the World Bank. Otherwise, we have kept the model framework consistent since 2023:

• Estimate global bitcoin ownership segmented by MSCI country classification (Developed, Emerging, Frontier, Standalone)

• Assume a modest annual allocation from existing and new owners’ disposable income into bitcoin

• Apply a flow-to-market-cap multiple to convert yearly net dollar inflows into implied market-cap growth

• Adjust for bitcoin’s programmed supply inflation (halving schedule)

Key updated inputs and assumptions (end of 2025)

We have however had to update our assumptions slightly. All these updates come on the back of empirical evidence we have found in the time between our last model publication and now. If no heavy weighing reason was encountered inciting us to update an assumption, it has been held constant.

• Current global bitcoin owners (2025 estimated): ~560 million (CoinShares meta-analysis arriving at 476m users at end of 2023, with 20% added growth)

• Annual allocation: still <1% of global disposable income directed to bitcoin (~$353 weighted average allocation per owner per year), but now a much larger number per owner. This has grown significantly due to two factors: first, the dramatic increase in US ownership, and second, increases in various national savings rates as per the World Bank

• Flow-to-market-cap multiple: reduced from 10x to 3.5x — deliberately conservative; while previous analyses have been shallow and assumption-heavy, a recent, and in our view, much more thorough analysis by James Check suggests that the multiple not only fluctuates between bull and bear markets, but is likely on average much lower than previous analyses suggest

• Bitcoin supply inflation: ~0.57% annualised average between 2025 and 2029 

These inputs are intentionally conservative and are designed to produce price-supporting floors, not exuberant upside targets. As an example, James Check demonstrated in his analysis on the price to market-cap multiple that the multiple tends to expand in bull markets and contract in bear markets. However, since we cannot predict when such markets will hit, we have opted for a constant defensible figure. While this means that we risk underestimating the peaks (and possibly also overestimating the lows), we prefer to err on the side of conservatism. 

Our core result is a significant increased valuation versus 2023

At unchanged conservative assumptions, bitcoin reaches 1.16 billion owners and ~$317,000 by 2029 — implying a ~3.2x return from mid-November 2025 levels in just four years. Annualised, this represents a CAGR of around 33%.

The acceleration of ownership is a main reason for increased model outputs

The 2023 model projected 323m owners by 2024. Reality delivered 467m by 2023 — significantly ahead of our assumed growth rate. The primary drivers:

1. Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US and Hong Kong turned bitcoin into a one-click savings vehicle for millions of boomers and institutions

2. Currency debasement continuation in India, Turkey, Argentina, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Lebanon pushed adoption rates in “Frontier” and high-inflation Emerging markets above our conservative estimates

3. Network effects: each halving cycle now sees faster recognition of bitcoin’s monetary premium

4. Mainstream support from US political and regulatory leaders as well as from top ranking financial company executives

Current ownership geography (2025 estimates From 2023 actuals with 20% added growth)

Absolute leaders remain population-weighted:

• India: ~196m owners

• China: ~37m (representing the single largest largely ‘untapped’ market)

• United States: ~42m

• Indonesia: ~35m

• Nigeria/Brazil: ~30m each

Penetration leaders (2025 estimates from 2023 actuals with 20% added growth, and discarding population aged under 18):

• El Salvador: ~31% (legal tender effect)

• UAE: ~24%

• Vietnam: ~21%

The combination of large absolute growth in Emerging/Frontier (adding hundreds of millions of new owners) and deeper capital allocation in Developed markets (higher dollar inflows per average global owner) is what produces the accelerated price trajectory.

The US contributes the most to annual flows, with China and India following

Due to its combination of high income and large population, unsurprisingly, the US will contribute the largest share (34%) of modeled annual flows by 2029. Behind the US, much more as a result of their massive sizes, the middle income countries China and India follow, with 11% and 8% respectively.

Following the top three contributors we find a long tail of similar contributors. While many of these are mid-sized developed market countries, there are also a significant number of sizable emerging market countries modeled as top 20 contributors due to their relatively large populations.

As expected, per capita contributions are dominated by developed market countries. However, due to the tendency of these countries to be small, their overall contributions (as seen above) tend to be modest—the obvious exception being the US.

Looking at the modeled per capita contributions from emerging market countries, we can start to get a sense for why the weighted average global per capita contribution is still rather low. While China pulls the average up on a per capita basis, their projected ownership percentage is still quite low compared to most other countries (this could end up being a mistake—our data basis for China is admittedly poor), India pulls it significantly down given its combination of low income, extremely high population, and high bitcoin ownership percentage.

Taken together, we find quite an interesting blend of contributors to overall flows. The US being the undisputed leader should hardly come as a surprise given what we have already seen in terms of quantifiable ETF inflows since their launch in early 2024. But the sheer size of China and India means they simply cannot be overlooked. The Chinese middle class is already larger than the entire population of the US, and combined with the indian middle class they are almost the size of the combined population of Europe.

While bitcoin adoption looks to primarily be an emerging market phenomenon, we have to remember that most people live in emerging markets. Developed markets therefore still remain extremely important to our projected bitcoin flows—an outcome that shouldn’t surprise us that much given how the global income and savings rates both skew heavily towards developed markets. The massive size of emerging market populations still make these countries highly relevant, and analysts should closely watch bitcoin adoption in the largest emerging markets to track its ongoing growth.

Where could the model still be wrong?

Bitcoin is a cyclical beast. 

Upside risks

• Allocation creep: If the global savings rate into bitcoin rises from <1% to 1.5–2% (still tiny vs 5–10% historically allocated to gold in Asia), price outcomes double

• Multiple expansion: If bitcoin starts to appreciably approach gold’s $25tn market cap (it would be around 17% in the last year of our model), investors may award it a larger flow to market-cap multiple based on a general derisking of the asset’s future prospects

• Supply constriction: We’re likely still in a post-IPO-like distribution phase for early bitcoin adopters, and this overhang might take some time to deplete. But after 2028, inflation drops below 0.2% and daily issuance falls under $20m (at $200,000 btc price), while weekly ETF inflows alone already average more than $500m

Downside risks

• Growth rates may vary year-to-year based on hype and it is possible that the growth numbers we measured for 2023 represents an outlier and that a mean reversion (even negative growth) could follow it, skewing the growth trajectory towards a lower path. We have tried to accommodate and protect ourselves against this possibility by holding 2023-2024 growth at 0%, only adding our estimated average annual 20% growth from 2024 to 2025 and onwards  

• Regulatory overreach in major jurisdictions could slow Developed-market inflows

• A prolonged global deflationary recession could reduce risk appetite

• Technological or governance failures (unlikely but non-zero)

What we would add however, is that as the model stands, even under pessimistic scenarios (halving the flow multiple to 1.75x and cutting allocation to 0.5%), the model still produces >$150k by 2029—well above current prices. 

Conclusion

Based on the updated adoption figures, and savings data from the World Bank, our price growth estimates have been revised upwards. While our previous model estimated a bitcoin price of ~$133k at the end of 2028, our updated model estimates ~$248k for that year, and $317k at the end of 2029.

The 2021–2023 adoption growth exceeded our original conservative projections by a wide margin (467m vs 269m estimated), yet none of the core model assumptions (sub-1% savings rate, 10x multiple, ~0.97% average inflation) have been revised upwards to create the price higher model calculation. On the contrary, we have reduced our multiple materially after discovering a superior analysis on which to base it—meaning we are reducing, not amplifying, the impact of our increasing demand flow expectations. 

The network simply compounded faster than our previous models anticipated. If the same conservative inputs are maintained, a reasonable bitcoin valuation floor now points to $317,000 by 2029, as supply growth approaches zero (20bp annual inflation from 2028) while demand continues to compound. At that point still, only 1.16bn people are projected to own bitcoin (X% of the current population).

We also reiterate that this framework continues to model price-supporting bottoms rather than tops. Bitcoin remains sensitive to animal spirits and its price regularly exceeds levels we consider fundamentally justified both to the upside and the downside. Our intention is that this bottom-up valuation model may offer our readers a fundamentals-based, assumption minimised framework for estimating the value potential for bitcoin over the next five years, built on the top of measurable adoption rates.

As always, we remain available for questions regarding any part of this paper or its underlying elements.