JPMorgan puts Bitcoin at 10% annual return for a decade

JPMorgan’s 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions report projects BTC$81,839.00▼0.32% Bitcoin to return 10% annually over the next decade, putting the cryptocurrency above the bank’s assumptions for major traditional assets. The report was published on October 20.

The report gives Bitcoin a wide range of outcomes: a 9.7% annual loss in its bear case, a 10% annual gain in its base case and a 17% annual gain in its bull case.

The comparison is direct. JPMorgan projects 5.6%-6.6% annual returns for U.S. bonds, 7.5% for U.S. large-cap equities, 7.7% for U.S. small-cap equities and 5.5% for gold. At 10%, Bitcoin’s projected return is 2.5 percentage points above U.S. large-cap equities, calculated as 10% minus 7.5%, and 4.5 points above gold, calculated as 10% minus 5.5%.

That spread is the practical change for portfolio teams using JPMorgan’s assumptions: Bitcoin now enters the bank’s long-term return table with a higher expected annual return than the listed traditional assets, over the same decade-long horizon. The bear case also puts the downside in the same framework, at a 9.7% annual loss rather than an unspecified risk.

The bank’s stance remains qualified. JPMorgan views Bitcoin as a “speculative asset and a hedge against monetary easing,” while warning that “volatility and unstable correlation to other asset classes…remain an obstacle to [its] widespread inclusion in portfolios.” Dr Sheena Shah, a portfolio manager at JPMorgan, and Dennis Cristallo, the bank’s head of digital asset strategy, wrote that Bitcoin “lacks a strategic role in portfolios other than as a bet on fiat currency expansion or future asset trading on blockchains.”

Those caveats matter for BTC holders and allocators. The return assumption does not establish a recommended allocation or remove the bank’s stated concern about portfolio inclusion. The report’s specific methodology for its bull, base and bear cases is not provided in the available facts.

The projection nevertheless departs from JPMorgan’s earlier skepticism. CEO Jamie Dimon described Bitcoin as a fraud in 2017; the new report assigns it a defined return range and a 10% base case. Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan summarized the shift in a line reported by Cointelegraph: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight at you, then they add you to their Long-Term Capital Markets Assumptions paper and predict you’ll be the best-performing asset of the next decade”

Bitcoin was trading at $81,453, down 1.2% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. That move is separate from the report’s decade-long assumption.