For Bitcoin ETFs, the comparison with gold has always been lurking in the background. Now Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has put a much bigger number on the table: Bitcoin ETFs could eventually hold three times as much money as gold ETFs.
That would be an extraordinary gap. Global gold ETFs held about $615 billion at the end of August. Multiplying that by three puts the equivalent Bitcoin ETF figure at roughly $1.85 trillion — around 19 times current levels.
Naturally, that raises the question investors cannot seem to resist: what could that much money mean for the price of Bitcoin?
Balchunas’ argument rests on three trends that extend beyond the mechanics of ETF trading.
First, Bitcoin has a younger user base. A 2026 Pew survey found that 26% of Americans aged 18–29 and 28% of those aged 30–49 had used crypto, compared with 10% of people over 50.
The implication in Balchunas’ thesis is less about today’s holdings than tomorrow’s wealth. Younger crypto users could control a larger share of investable money as they move through their careers, potentially expanding the pool of capital available to Bitcoin ETFs.
Then there is institutional participation, which still has plenty of room to increase.
Professional investors represented about 21% of US Bitcoin ETF assets in the first quarter. Investment advisers held the equivalent of roughly 150,000 BTC, while bank exposure had quadrupled year over year.
For Bitcoin ETFs, the third advantage is distribution. Unlike previous generations of crypto investment products, these funds sit inside the traditional financial system, with major issuers including BlackRock and Fidelity putting Bitcoin in front of investors who may never have interacted directly with a crypto exchange.
US funds have collected about $54.6 billion in net inflows since launch.
Bitcoin ETFs Are Making a Much Bigger Bet on BTC
The potential scale becomes easier to see when you stop thinking in dollars alone and look at how much Bitcoin the funds might actually hold.
US Bitcoin ETFs currently control about 1.26 million BTC. From there, the arithmetic gets interesting — but also surprisingly slippery.
ETF assets can rise because investors put in more money. They can also rise because the Bitcoin already held by the funds becomes more valuable. That means there is no simple formula linking a future asset total to a specific Bitcoin price.
Still, the scenarios illustrate just how large Balchunas’ prediction would be.
Imagine US Bitcoin ETF holdings doubled, reaching 2.52 million BTC, while total ETF assets climbed to $1.85 trillion. Under that scenario, Bitcoin would need to trade at roughly $732,000.
Now take a different path. If ETF holdings tripled to 3.78 million BTC while assets reached the same $1.85 trillion, the implied Bitcoin price would be about $488,000.
That produces an illustrative range of roughly $490,000 to $730,000.
In percentage terms, that is about six to ten times Bitcoin’s current price.
But the numbers are less a forecast than a way to understand the scale of the claim. The amount of Bitcoin accumulated by ETFs changes the implied price considerably, even when the overall asset target stays fixed.
And the gold comparison itself is not frozen in time. Gold ETF assets can continue growing too, while Bitcoin funds could accumulate substantially more coins.
That leaves Balchunas’ prediction with a much bigger implication than a headline Bitcoin price number.
If Bitcoin ETFs really were to reach assets equivalent to three times the current size of the global gold ETF market, Bitcoin would need a market far larger than it has today.
The interesting question, then, is not simply whether Bitcoin could reach $500,000 or $700,000. It is what would have to happen to the financial system around it for ETFs to absorb that kind of capital in the first place.