A bank whose CEO once called Bitcoin a “fraud” now sees it reaching $170,000, and the reasoning starts with gold.
JPMorgan Chase strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou and his team laid out the case in a research note, arguing that Bitcoin is becoming a credible competitor to gold for institutional capital. The note has not been made publicly available, and JPMorgan has not released a direct quote from the analysis. The target, which implies roughly 60 to 70 percent upside from Bitcoin’s price near $105,000 in early 2026, rests on a simple but provocative framework: measure Bitcoin not against tech stocks or speculative assets, but against the $18-to-20 trillion global gold market.
If even a small fraction of that capital migrates to Bitcoin, the math gets dramatic fast. But the forecast arrives at a moment when gold itself is on a historic tear, raising a question JPMorgan’s note does not fully resolve: are these assets competitors, or are they rising together on the same tide?
Gold’s record year sets the benchmark
Gold did not just have a good 2025. It had one of its best years on record.
The World Gold Council’s Gold Demand Trends report documented surging investment demand across ETFs, bars, and coins through December 2025. Central bank purchases remained elevated for a third consecutive year, with China, Poland, and India among the largest buyers. Global gold ETF holdings climbed sharply, reversing outflows that had persisted through parts of 2023 and early 2024.
Retail demand in the United States tracked the same pattern. The U.S. Mint’s bullion sales figures show sustained purchasing of American Eagle and Buffalo gold coins across multiple quarters, not a speculative spike but steady accumulation that persisted throughout the year.
Trade policy added fuel. Tariff adjustments on gold bar imports into the United States reduced friction for physical delivery, a development the London Bullion Market Association publicly welcomed, as reported by Reuters. (The specific Reuters article URL and publication date could not be independently verified and are therefore not linked here.) Lower import barriers meant more metal flowing into domestic vaults, reinforcing the demand trend already visible in Mint data and ETF inflows.
By early 2026, spot gold was trading above $3,300 per ounce, having breached the $3,000 mark during 2025. That rally gave JPMorgan a concrete baseline: this is what happens when institutional and retail investors converge on a scarce, non-sovereign store of value. The bank’s Bitcoin thesis asks whether the same dynamic can play out in a digital market that is roughly one-tenth the size.
The Bitcoin side of the equation
Bitcoin’s own trajectory has made the comparison harder to dismiss.
Since the launch of U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs in January 2024, institutional money has poured into the asset class at a pace that caught even bullish observers off guard. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) surpassed $50 billion in assets under management within roughly a year of launch, according to fund disclosures, a growth rate that outstripped the early trajectories of the most successful gold ETFs, including SPDR Gold Shares (GLD). Fidelity, Ark Invest, and other issuers added billions more.
The April 2024 halving, which cut the rate of new Bitcoin creation from 6.25 to 3.125 coins per block, tightened the supply side. Historically, Bitcoin’s price has risen significantly in the 12 to 18 months following each halving, and the current cycle has followed that pattern. By early 2026, Bitcoin was trading above $100,000.
JPMorgan is not alone in projecting six-figure targets. Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick published a $200,000 forecast in early 2025, though the specific publication and date of that forecast could not be independently verified for linking purposes. Bernstein analysts set a $200,000 year-end 2025 target in a note to clients, also without a publicly available link or specific publication date. What distinguishes JPMorgan’s framing is the explicit gold comparison: rather than modeling Bitcoin purely on adoption curves or network effects, the bank is sizing it against the total addressable market for stores of value that sit outside government-issued currencies.
The math behind that framing is worth spelling out. Gold’s total above-ground market value sits in the range of $18 to $20 trillion. Bitcoin’s market capitalization near $105,000 per coin is roughly $2 trillion. For Bitcoin to reach $170,000, its market cap would need to climb to approximately $3.4 trillion, still less than 20 percent of gold’s. JPMorgan’s thesis does not require Bitcoin to replace gold. It requires Bitcoin to capture a sliver of the same demand.
Where the thesis gets shaky
The gap between gold’s verified strength and Bitcoin’s projected trajectory is real, and several assumptions underlying the $170,000 target remain unproven.
JPMorgan’s full research note, including its modeling assumptions and scenario analysis, has not been made publicly available, and no direct quotes from Panigirtzoglou or his team have been released in connection with the $170,000 figure. Without access to the underlying methodology, it is unclear whether $170,000 represents a base case, an optimistic scenario, or a theoretical ceiling. That distinction matters enormously for anyone trying to use the number as an investment signal.
The idea that gold and Bitcoin compete for the same pool of capital is also contested. No major gold industry body, including the LBMA and the World Gold Council, has publicly endorsed the view that Bitcoin is drawing demand away from gold. Both assets rallied simultaneously through much of 2025, suggesting they may attract overlapping but distinct investor bases rather than functioning as direct substitutes. It is possible that the “digital gold” narrative flatters Bitcoin without actually describing how institutions allocate money.
Regulatory clarity remains incomplete. The approval of spot ETFs was a milestone, but open questions about custody standards, tax treatment of digital assets, and stablecoin legislation could either accelerate or slow institutional adoption. JPMorgan’s target implicitly assumes a favorable regulatory trajectory that has not fully materialized, particularly in the United States, where comprehensive crypto legislation has stalled repeatedly in Congress.
Finally, macroeconomic conditions played a significant role in gold’s 2025 surge. Persistent inflation concerns, geopolitical instability, and volatility in traditional bond and equity markets all pushed capital toward safe havens. If those pressures ease, the urgency behind alternative-asset allocations could fade, weakening the tailwind that both gold and Bitcoin have enjoyed.
JPMorgan’s own evolution on crypto
The $170,000 target carries institutional irony that is hard to ignore.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin a “fraud” in 2017 and has repeated variations of that criticism for years. As recently as 2024, he told CNBC he would “close it down” if he were a government official. Yet the bank’s research division has steadily expanded its crypto coverage, and JPMorgan now facilitates Bitcoin-related transactions for institutional clients through its blockchain unit, Onyx, and its JPM Coin infrastructure.
That tension between the CEO’s personal skepticism and the bank’s research output is worth noting. It suggests JPMorgan’s crypto coverage is driven by client demand and market reality rather than top-down enthusiasm, which may actually lend the forecast more weight than if it came from a firm that had been uniformly bullish from the start.
Gold is proven, Bitcoin’s $170,000 is a bet
The evidence behind this story splits cleanly. Gold’s record demand in 2025 is documented by government data and institutional reporting that anyone can verify. The U.S. Mint’s sales figures, the World Gold Council’s annual report, and spot prices above $3,300 per ounce all confirm that capital flowed into gold at exceptional levels, supported by investor appetite, central bank buying, and favorable trade policy.
Bitcoin’s path to $170,000 is a forecast built on plausible assumptions about supply scarcity, ETF-driven institutional adoption, and competitive dynamics with gold. But it depends on outcomes no one can verify in advance. Even well-resourced Wall Street research teams miss price targets regularly, and JPMorgan’s own track record on crypto calls has been uneven.
The practical takeaway: gold’s 2025 performance is a description of what already happened. JPMorgan’s Bitcoin target is a scenario that could unfold if a similar pattern of demand develops in a market that is younger, more volatile, and still working out its regulatory framework. Whether that scenario plays out will be determined not by any single bank’s forecast, but by the actual pace of institutional adoption and the macroeconomic backdrop over the months ahead.
