🥛 BTC to $343K, by JPMorgan’s numbers 😳

GM. This is Milk Road, the daily newsletter that breaks down the biggest moves in crypto so you can make smarter calls.

Here’s what we’ve got for you today:

✍️ JPMorgan puts a number on BTC.
🎙️ The Milk Road Show: Jamie Coutts: Bitcoin to $100K Soon - But the REAL Opportunity Is Hiding Here.
🍪 GENIUS Act rulebook lands.

Chainlink is bringing tokenized finance to New York. Attendance is by application, and seats are limited.

Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko.

JPMORGAN PUTS A NUMBER ON BITCOIN 🔢

Every year, J.P. Morgan Asset Management publishes its Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions.

It's a giant table of what the bank expects every major asset to return over the next 10-15 years, and pension funds and wealth managers use it to plan their portfolios.

This year's edition is the 31st, and it's the first one with Bitcoin in it.

JPM expects BTC to return 10% a year, which puts it at the top of the whole table. 👇

Source: J.P. Morgan Asset Management

For context, a classic 60/40 portfolio (60% stocks, 40% bonds) is expected to return 7% a year.

And if BTC compounded at JPM's 10% from today's ~$82K, it would hit ~$213K in 10 years and ~$343K in 15.

JPMorgan is building with crypto too.

On Oct 19, the same day the report came out, it brought JPM Coin to Ethereum. That's a digital version of a JPMorgan bank deposit, which approved institutions can now move around 24/7.

A few days earlier, Schwab (~$13.3T in client assets) opened crypto trading to all of its eligible clients.

The biggest names in finance keep saying yes… yet the market has barely blinked.

ETH fell 4.2% the week JPM Coin launched, and spot ETH ETFs lost $103M on launch day alone.

BTC, meanwhile, sits around $82K, roughly a third below its ~$126K all-time high from last October.

So why isn't anyone celebrating?

CHAINLINK IS BRINGING TOKENIZED FINANCE TO NEW YORK

Banks, asset managers, and market infrastructure firms are already putting financial assets onchain.

On October 29, Chainlink is bringing the people building that infrastructure together in New York for Link:NYC.

The focus? What’s already working, what’s still holding institutions back, and what’s next for tokenized assets and cross-chain settlement.

Attendance is by application, and seats are limited.

JPMORGAN PUTS A NUMBER ON BITCOIN (P2) 🔢

John (our crypto analyst) thinks we've gotten used to this kind of adoption.

Big institutional wins now land so often that no single one moves the price much.

Each one lays further groundwork, and the money tends to arrive once the pipes are in.

JPM's report also comes with a catch.

The bank put a return range on Bitcoin, but it didn't add BTC to its model portfolios (the ready-made mixes it recommends to clients).

The main reason is how wildly the price swings, and JPM assumes BTC swings about 3x as much as stocks or gold. 👇

Source: J.P. Morgan Asset Management

Those swings take a big bite out of returns.

JPM's average yearly gain for BTC is 20.9%, but once you account for the drawdowns, what a holder actually keeps works out to ~10%.

Not everyone buys the 55% figure, though. Matt Hougan (CIO of crypto fund manager Bitwise) thinks it's too high, which would make JPM's return forecast too conservative.

BTC also has tougher competition than it used to. The 10-year Treasury yield (what the U.S. government pays to borrow for 10 years) is above 5%, and JPM's own forecast for global bonds is 5.3%, the highest in two decades.

That's a decent return with a lot less stomach-churning.

In short: America's biggest bank now expects BTC to beat stocks, gold and private equity over the next 10-15 years, even if it isn't telling clients to buy yet.

The two things to watch from here are ETF flows (they've pulled in over $1B in three days this week, flipping October positive) and whether BTC makes it into JPM's model portfolios next year.

ICYMI: back in February, John set buy orders for BTC at $60K and $58K.

Both filled this summer, and when the second one hit, he told PRO members he was "buying the bear market lows on one of the best assets of all time."

At ~$82K, those buys are up ~35% and ~41%.

That's what having a plan buys you:

The chance to buy while everyone else is panicking.

If you want John's next move the moment he makes it, try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days.

JAMIE COUTTS ON CRYPTO'S PAYBACK ERA

New token supply just hit a record low, and protocols paid holders almost $2B last year.

Jamie Coutts, Chief Crypto Analyst at Real Vision and founder of Helios Analytics, joined John to explain why he calls this crypto's payback era.

Here's what we covered:

Why tokens passing Jamie's fundamental filter have beaten the rest in 15 of the last 18 months.
How fast agent payments grow now that Cloudflare lets businesses charge AI agents in stablecoins.
What's in Jamie's bags after big runs in Zcash, Derive and NEAR.

👉 Watch the full episode now.