MarketsBitcoinOpinion
|3 min ReadVanEck: $2.9M Bitcoin Is The Base Case
Lucca Menezes
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
The legacy financial system is blinking. For years, institutions dismissed Bitcoin as rat poison. Now, they are publishing whitepapers that map out the death of fiat currency. VanEck, a $161 billion asset manager, just dropped a report that doesn't just predict growth; it models a total monetary regime change. Their base case for 2050 puts Bitcoin at $2.9 million per coin. This isn't moon math. It is the price of insurance when the global banking system catches fire.
Authors Matthew Sigel and Patrick Bush aren't guessing. They are calculating the inevitable outcome of unchecked money printing. The thesis is simple: Bitcoin stops being a speculative toy and starts eating global trade settlement. When you strip away the noise, this is a bet that central banks will fail to maintain trust in their own paper.
The Base Case: Replacing The Plumbing
The $2.9 million figure assumes Bitcoin captures 10% of global international trade. That might sound high until you look at the friction in the current system. Swift is slow, expensive, and weaponized. Bitcoin is instant, final, and neutral. The report argues that by 2050, central banks will hold 2.5% of their balance sheets in BTC.
This is the "Reserve Pivot." Governments don't buy Bitcoin because they like it. They buy it because they cannot trust their neighbors. As confidence in G7 sovereign debt erodes, nations will be forced to hold assets that cannot be debased or sanctioned. Bitcoin is the only neutral collateral on earth.
Allocation Is No Longer Optional
The most critical takeaway isn't the price target; it's the risk assessment. VanEck explicitly states that having zero exposure to Bitcoin is now riskier than holding it. In a traditional 60/40 portfolio, replacing just 3% of assets with Bitcoin historically optimizes returns without breaking the risk curve.
This is asymmetric warfare for your portfolio. You are betting a small percentage of your capital to hedge against the systemic failure of everything else. If VanEck is right, the risk isn't that Bitcoin goes to zero. The risk is that you are holding cash while the world reprices everything in sats.
Tactical Alpha: The RUP Indicator
For those trading the cycle, VanEck points to the Relative Unrealized Profit (RUP) metric. As of late 2025, the RUP sits at 0.43. This is the "Goldilocks zone"—mid-cycle territory. It suggests the easy money has been made, but the mania phase hasn't started. We aren't at a top until funding rates blow out; currently, they are sitting at a modest 4.9%.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.