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BREAKING: JPMorgan issues first long-term bitcoin return forecast, projecting 10% annually

JPMorgan's asset management arm has put a number on Bitcoin for the first time, and it's 10% a year over the next 10 to 15 years.

It's top of the table in the firm's 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, ahead of US large-cap stocks on 7.5% and gold on 5.5%.

(It's an annual return forecast for more than 200 assets that big investors use to plan their portfolios.)

Quite the shift for a bank whose CEO, Jamie Dimon, called Bitcoin a fraud in 2017.

That 10% is what JPMorgan expects an investor to keep once the swings are counted.

Average Bitcoin's good and bad years together and the report gets 20.9%, more than double.

The difference is volatility, which JPMorgan pegs at 55% a year for Bitcoin against about 17% for gold.

(Lose half your money one year and you need a 100% gain the next just to break even, so big swings eat into compounding.)

Those swings are also why it left Bitcoin out of its main portfolio models, calling it "a speculative asset and a hedge against monetary easing" rather than a diversifier.

Then there's the competition from bonds…

The 10-year Treasury yield sits at 5.12%, about half Bitcoin's forecast return with a fraction of the swings, and JPMorgan's own bond forecasts are the highest in two decades.

Bitwise's Matt Hougan reckons the 55% assumption is too high, which makes the forecast too cautious (Bitwise runs crypto funds, so it has a stake in that view).

By our count, Bitcoin's daily moves over the past year work out to about 44% annualised, closer to his side of the argument.

The smaller the swings, the more of that 20.9% survives the compounding.

Calm them for long enough and Bitcoin clears one of the two hurdles JPMorgan says keep it out of most portfolios. 🚀

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Scott Melker says last week's crypto dip hit altcoins about four times harder than Bitcoin.

He's the host of The Wolf of All Streets, a former professional DJ turned full-time market obsessive who has interviewed nearly everyone in the industry.

Here's what he posted:

From Oct 12 to 19, Bitcoin slipped 2% while the median top-100 altcoin lost 8.4%.

His figures for the majors match CoinGecko's daily prices, with Ether down 5% and Solana and XRP down more.

That's the usual pattern when traders get nervous but stay in crypto…

The smaller coins get sold first, and the money that stays tends to sit in Bitcoin, the deepest market, where a big sell order moves the price least.

The scoreboard for that is Bitcoin dominance (Bitcoin's share of the whole crypto market's value), which sits at about 59.5% on CoinGecko.

His last line is for anyone buying the alt dip, since an altseason is money rotating out of Bitcoin and into alts.

That shows up as dominance falling while prices rise.

Last week, prices fell and dominance held near 60%, the opposite pattern.

It's one week of data, and Bitcoin has already bounced back to about $83,000.

For alt holders, the signal to wait for is Bitcoin's share falling, and it hasn't budged yet 📉

Today we'll be taking a look at the overall stablecoin supply.

Stablecoins are the backbone of crypto liquidity, used for seamless trading and instant cross-border transactions.

The chart below tracks the aggregate change in the total stablecoin market cap.

$260.80 billion in stablecoins now sit on-chain. (Two weeks ago: $263.09 billion)

Down $2.29 billion in a fortnight, about four times the size of the gain the print before.

Stablecoins get burned when holders cash them back into dollars, so a shrinking pool means money leaving crypto.

That leaves the pool $1.74 billion below where it sat a month ago, $262.54 billion, wiping out the last month's gains and then some.

It's still only about 0.9% of the total, a small dent in a $260 billion float.

Two weeks ago the refill was back on, and this fortnight it drained straight back out. 💵

Mt. Gox Pushes Repayment Deadline to 2027 With $2.8B in Bitcoin Still to Distribute. The trustee moved the deadline to Oct. 31, 2027, while Mt. Gox-linked wallets still hold about 34,388 BTC, according to Arkham.

FINMA approves Switzerland’s first Bitcoin ETF for retail investors. The fund will hold Bitcoin directly, and FINMA said several other providers have filed or announced applications, with no launch date set.

Crypto firms, Wall Street push SEC to revise Regulation Crypto Assets as comments close. Comments on the proposal, which would exempt raises of up to $75 million a year from registration, were due Tuesday, with more than 100 filed.

Kazakhstan court bars Coinbase, five others from unlicensed crypto services in Astana International Financial Centre. The injunctions cover Coinbase, BingX, Bitcoin.com, HTX, BitMart and WEEX, but apply only to users inside the Astana financial centre.

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Select your answer below and you’ll be redirected to the results page. (answer explanation can be found after “Meme Corner”)

Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?

Trivia Answer: The Byzantine Generals Problem 🥳

The puzzle imagines generals who must agree on when to attack while some of their messengers could be traitors. Bitcoin's proof-of-work lets thousands of nodes agree on one ledger without trusting each other.

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DISCLAIMER: The content of this newsletter is not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice. Please be careful and do your own research.