J.P. Morgan projects Bitcoin to outperform US stocks and gold over the next decade

J.P. Morgan Asset Management now expects Bitcoin to beat US stocks, gold, and REITs over the next ten years. That forecast comes from the bank’s “Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions 2027” report.

The numbers behind the forecast

The report was unveiled around October 19, 2026. It puts Bitcoin’s expected compound return at 10% a year, ahead of US large-cap equities at 7.5% and gold at 5.5%.

According to the research findings, Bitcoin is now the highest-returning asset class in the history of the report’s long-term projections. It also marks the first time Bitcoin has appeared in J.P. Morgan’s annual LTCMA at all.

The report pegs Bitcoin’s annualized volatility at 55%, compared with roughly 18% for large-cap stocks and 17.2% for gold.

J.P. Morgan estimates Bitcoin’s annualized arithmetic return at 20.9%, roughly double the 10% compound figure. Arithmetic return is the simple average of each year’s gain or loss. Compound return is what an investor actually ends up with after holding through the ups and downs. Big drawdowns eat into compounding: lose half your money and you need to double it just to get back to even.

A forecast, not a recommendation

Bitcoin is included in the return projections, but it is left out of the report’s sample portfolio allocations. J.P. Morgan is willing to say what it thinks Bitcoin might earn, but is not yet willing to tell clients how much of it to own.

Bitcoin is also the only digital asset in the document. No other tokens appear anywhere in the LTCMA assumptions.

Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan described the moment as a shift in how institutions view Bitcoin, noting the asset has moved from something big firms opposed to something they now build into formal forecasts.

How J.P. Morgan got here

The bank’s research teams have previously set shorter-term price targets around $170,000 and reiterated a long-term parity level of $266,000. That figure reflects a scenario in which Bitcoin matches gold on a volatility-adjusted basis.

Bitcoin currently trades near $82,000. The shorter-term target implies roughly a doubling from current levels, and the parity scenario implies considerably more.

What this means for investors and institutions

The gap between 20.9% arithmetic and 10% compound returns shows how much of Bitcoin’s theoretical upside gets consumed by its own turbulence. Bitcoin’s 55% volatility makes that gap unusually large compared to equities and gold.

The exclusion from sample portfolios marks the gap between acknowledging an asset and actually recommending it. If a future edition of the LTCMA moves Bitcoin from the forecast table into model allocations, that would mark a more consequential shift.