From $5 to $83,000 – The Digital Gold Rush Continues

Bitcoin has come a long way since trading at just $5.34 on Saint Patrick’s Day in 2012. Now, in 2025, the world’s largest digital currency has reached $83,223 on this holiday, marking a staggering 1,558,000% increase in just 13 years. With institutional adoption surging and supply remaining fixed, Bitcoin’s long-term trajectory appears stronger than ever.

A Look at Bitcoin’s Explosive Growth

Bitcoin’s price movements in the early years was anything but predictable. In just one year, from 2012 to 2013, BTC skyrocketed 780%, reaching $47. The next year, it surged again to $630, a 1,240% increase from 2013.

However, Bitcoin’s price swings have been sharp. By 2015, it had retraced to $290, but by 2017, it climbed to $1,180, and in just one more year, it hit $8,321—a 605% increase. Even after a pullback to $4,047 in 2019, the next five years saw Bitcoin go from $5,002 in 2020 to $83,223 in 2025.

2012 $5.34

2013: $47

2014: $630

2015: $290

2016: $417

2017: $1,180

2018: $8,321

2019: $4,047

2020: $5,002

2021: $56,825

2022: $41,140

2023: $26,876

2024: $68,845

2025: $83,223

Why Bitcoin’s Price Keeps Rising

Despite its volatility, Bitcoin’s long-term trajectory remains upward, driven by increasing demand and fixed supply. Unlike fiat currencies, which governments can print indefinitely, Bitcoin’s supply is capped at 21 million coins. As more individuals, institutions, and even governments adopt Bitcoin, scarcity drives prices higher.

Several major factors are contributing to Bitcoin’s growing adoption in the last year:

The U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve – United States Senator Cynthia Lummis and Congressman Nick Begich both introduced legislation to green light the U.S. to purchase 1,000,000 BTC for their strategic reserves, further solidifying its legitimacy and causing other countries potential FOMO in.

Corporate Adoption – Companies like Strategy, Metaplanet, and Rumble continue adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets, treating it as a strategic reserve asset.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs – The approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the U.S. has opened the floodgates for institutional investment, allowing hedge funds, pension funds, and retail investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin through regulated financial products.These ETFs have collectively purchased over 1 million BTC.

Halving – On April 19th, 2024, Bitcoin underwent its fourth halving event, where the block reward for those mining Bitcoin was cut in half from 6.25 BTC per block to 3.125 BTC per block. This decrease in the amount of daily new bitcoin issued on the market historically leads to an increase in the price of BTC. Bitcoin halvings occur roughly every 210,000 blocks (approximately every four years).

What’s Next?

With demand skyrocketing and supply shrinking due to upcoming Bitcoin halvings, Bitcoin seems poised to continue its historic rise in price. If history is any indicator, the best time to buy Bitcoin was years ago—the second-best time might be today.

Strategy (MSTR) marginally added to its massive bitcoin (BTC) holdings, selling a modest amount of its preferred stock (STRK) to fund the acquisition.

The company last week purchased 130 bitcoin for roughly $10.7 million, or an average price of $82,981 each, according to a Monday morning filing. The so-called “BTC yield” is 6.9% year-to-date, according to Strategy.

Company holdings are now 499,226 bitcoin acquired for a total of $33.1 billion, or an average cost of $66,360 per token.

This latest purchase was funded by the sale of 123,000 shares of STRK, which generated about $10.7 million of net proceeds. Strategy last week announced a mammoth $21 billion at-the-market offering of that preferred stock.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

In a new publication titled The Mustard Seed, Joe Burnett—Director of Market Research at Unchained—outlines a thesis that envisions Bitcoin reaching $10 million per coin by 2035. This inaugural quarterly letter takes the long view, focusing on “time arbitrage” as it surveys where Bitcoin, technology, and human civilization could stand a decade from now.

Burnett’s argument revolves around two principal transformations that, he contends, are setting the stage for an unprecedented migration of global capital into Bitcoin: (1) the “Great Flow of Capital” into an asset with absolute scarcity, and (2) the “Acceleration of Deflationary Technology” as AI and robotics reshape entire industries.

A Long-Term Perspective On Bitcoin

Most economic commentary zooms in on the next earnings report or the immediate price volatility. In contrast, The Mustard Seed announces its mission clearly: “Unlike most financial commentary that fixates on the next quarter or next year, this letter takes the long view—identifying profound shifts before they become consensus.”

At the core of Burnett’s outlook is the observation that the global financial system—comprising roughly $900 trillion in total assets—faces ongoing risks of “dilution or devaluation.” Bonds, currencies, equities, gold, and real estate each have expansionary or inflationary components that erode their store-of-value function:

• Gold ($20 trillion): Mined at approximately 2% annually, increasing supply and slowly diluting its scarcity.
• Real Estate ($300 trillion): Expands at around 2.4% per year due to new development.
• Equities ($110 trillion): Company profits are constantly eroded by competition and market saturation, contributing to devaluation risk.
• Fixed Income & Fiat ($230 trillion): Structurally subject to inflation, which reduces purchasing power over time.

Burnett describes this phenomenon as capital “searching for a lower potential energy state,” likening the process to water cascading down a waterfall. In his view, all pre-Bitcoin asset classes were effectively “open bounties” for dilution or devaluation. Wealth managers could distribute capital among real estate, bonds, gold, or stocks, but each category carried a mechanism by which its real value could erode.

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Enter Bitcoin, with its 21-million-coin hard cap. Burnett sees this digital asset as the first monetary instrument incapable of being diluted or devalued from within. Supply is fixed; demand, if it grows, can directly translate into price appreciation. He cites Michael Saylor’s “waterfall analogy”: “Capital naturally seeks the lowest potential energy state—just as water flows downhill. Before bitcoin, wealth had no true escape from dilution or devaluation. Wealth stored in every asset class acted as a market bounty, incentivizing dilution or devaluation.”

As soon as Bitcoin became widely recognized, says Burnett, the game changed for capital allocation. Much like discovering an untapped reservoir far below existing water basins, the global wealth supply found a new outlet—one that cannot be augmented or diluted.

To illustrate Bitcoin’s unique supply dynamics, The Mustard Seed draws a parallel with the halving cycle. In 2009, miners received 50 BTC per block—akin to Niagara Falls at full force. As of today, the reward dropped to 3.125 BTC, reminiscent of halving the Falls’ flow repeatedly until it is significantly reduced. In 2065, Bitcoin’s newly minted supply will be negligible compared to its total volume, mirroring a waterfall reduced to a trickle.

Though Burnett concedes that attempts to quantify Bitcoin’s global adoption rely on uncertain assumptions, he references two models: the Power Law Model which projects $1.8 million per BTC by 2035 and Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin model which suggests $2.1 million per BTC by 2035.

He counters that these projections might be “too conservative” because they often assume diminishing returns. In a world of accelerating technological adoption—and a growing realization of Bitcoin’s properties—price targets could overshoot these models significantly.

The Acceleration Of Deflationary Technology

A second major catalyst for Bitcoin’s upside potential, per The Mustard Seed, is the deflationary wave brought on by AI, automation, and robotics. These innovations rapidly increase productivity, lower costs, and make goods and services more abundant. By 2035, Burnett believes global costs in several key sectors could undergo dramatic reductions.

Adidas’ “Speedfactories” cut sneaker production from months to days. The scaling of 3D printing and AI-driven assembly lines could slash manufacturing costs by 10x. 3D-printed homes already go up 50x faster at far lower costs. Advanced supply-chain automation, combined with AI logistics, could make quality housing 10x cheaper. Autonomous ride-hailing can potentially reduce fares by 90% by removing labor costs and improving efficiency.

Burnett underscores that, under a fiat system, natural deflation is often “artificially suppressed.” Monetary policies—like persistent inflation and stimulus—inflate prices, masking technology’s real impact on lowering costs.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, would let deflation “run its course,” increasing purchasing power for holders as goods become more affordable. In his words: “A person holding 0.1 BTC today (~$10,000) could see its purchasing power increase 100x or more by 2035 as goods and services become exponentially cheaper.”

To illustrate how supply growth erodes a store of value over time, Burnett revisits gold’s performance since 1970. Gold’s nominal price from $36 per ounce to roughly $2,900 per ounce in 2025 appears substantial, but that price gain was continuously diluted by the annual 2% increase in gold’s overall supply. Over five decades, the global stock of gold almost tripled.

If gold’s supply had been static, its price would have hit $8,618 per ounce by 2025, according to Burnett’s calculations. This supply constraint would have bolstered gold’s scarcity, possibly pushing demand and price even higher than $8,618.

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Bitcoin, by contrast, incorporates precisely the fixed supply condition that gold never had. Any new demand will not spur additional coin issuance and thus should drive the price upward more directly.

Burnett’s forecast for a $10 million Bitcoin by 2035 would imply a total market cap of $200 trillion. While that figure sounds colossal, he points out that it represents only about 11% of global wealth—assuming global wealth continues to expand at a ~7% annual rate. From this vantage point, allocating around 11% of the world’s assets into what The Mustard Seed calls “the best long-term store of value asset” might not be far-fetched. “Every past store of value has perpetually expanded in supply to meet demand. Bitcoin is the first that cannot.”

A key piece of the puzzle is the security budget for Bitcoin: miner revenue. By 2035, Bitcoin’s block subsidy will be down to 0.78125 BTC per block. At $10 million per coin, miners could earn $411 billion in aggregate revenue each year. Since miners sell the Bitcoin they earn to cover costs, the market would have to absorb $411 billion of newly mined BTC annually.

Burnett draws a parallel with the global wine market, which was valued at $385 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $528 billion by 2030. If a “mundane” sector like wine can sustain that level of consumer demand, an industry securing the world’s leading digital store of value reaching similar scale, he argues, is well within reason.
Despite public perception that Bitcoin is becoming mainstream, Burnett highlights an underreported metric: “The number of people worldwide with $100,000 or more in bitcoin is only 400,000… that’s 0.005% of the global population—just 5 in 100,000 people.”

Meanwhile, studies might show around 39% of Americans have some level of “direct or indirect” Bitcoin exposure, but this figure includes any fractional ownership—such as holding shares of Bitcoin-related equities or ETFs through mutual funds and pension plans. Real, substantial adoption remains niche. “If Bitcoin is the best long-term savings technology, we would expect anyone with substantial savings to hold a substantial amount of bitcoin. Yet today, virtually no one does.”

Burnett emphasizes that the road to $10 million does not require Bitcoin to supplant all money worldwide—only to “absorb a meaningful percentage of global wealth.” The strategy for forward-looking investors, he contends, is simple but non-trivial: ignore short-term noise, focus on the multi-year horizon, and act before global awareness of Bitcoin’s properties becomes universal. “Those who can see past the short-term volatility and focus on the bigger picture will recognize bitcoin as the most asymmetric and overlooked bet in global markets.”

In other words, it is about “front-running the capital migration” while Bitcoin’s user base is still comparatively minuscule and the vast majority of traditional wealth remains in legacy assets.

At press time, BTC traded at $83,388.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com