The network’s upside is less about throughput and more about becoming reserve-grade collateral in a world that increasingly prices trust. A ~5x path is plausible if institutional access and hard-money share gains persist.

Bitcoin’s non-linear upside is a collateral re-rating: if ETFs keep normalizing access and BTC becomes the default neutral reserve asset alongside (not instead of) gold, then modest share gains of the global hard-money basket can drive a multi-trillion network value even if base-layer fees stay relatively small.

As AI cheapens cognition, value concentrates in trust, neutrality, and durable settlement; BTC is the simplest, most widely accepted neutral collateral with globally distributed security and liquidity.

BTC doesn’t need to “win blockspace”; it needs to keep winning legitimacy and distribution. The realistic bull/base blend is that spot-ETF rails, derivatives, and custody standards keep lowering institutional friction while macro conditions keep expanding the hard-money buyer set. If BTC’s share of the hard-money basket rises from mid-single digits to high-teens by 2031, the network value can compound ~5x. With capped supply (21M), that network-value multiple corresponds directly to the BTC price multiple.

The core risks are (1) policy/custody chokepoints constraining incremental institutional demand, (2) long-run security-budget credibility as subsidy halves again in 2028, and (3) centralization optics (custodians/pools) undermining the neutrality narrative right as BTC becomes more “systemic.”

No meaningful change: the thesis remains a distribution-led collateral re-rating with L2 activity mostly showing up as settlement demand episodically.

Slightly tightened to better anchor on institutional long-horizon targets and today’s low-fee baseline rather than assuming a persistent fee boom.

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