River’s $840,000 Bitcoin projection draws scrutiny over its assumptions

BTC is consolidating just above $77,000, while River has released a report projecting that Bitcoin could trade at $840,000 five years from now. The company, which focuses on Bitcoin-related financial services, also urged investors to allocate 10% of their total assets to BTC. That said, the report should be read with its incentives in mind. River’s business is tied to Bitcoin, and that shapes how it frames the asset. The model is built in three steps. First, River starts from adoption. It says about 4% of the world owns Bitcoin, while Wall Street investment advisers have an overall allocation of just 0.008%. Among the 30 largest registered investment advisers in the U.S., 29 already hold Bitcoin, but the median allocation is still only 0.1%. The starting point is low, which also means the room for growth remains large. Second, it projects the trend forward. According to a 2025 Bitwise survey, the share of advisers allocating to crypto rose from 22% to 32% in one year, and another 56% said they were considering it. Liu Jielian says that if even half of that pace continues, four to five in every ten advisers could be involved within three to five years. Third, River scales the numbers up to the global balance sheet. It pegs total global financial assets at about $333 trillion. If 20% to 40% of that mix is considered, and the average Bitcoin allocation lands between 2% and 4%, the resulting capital inflow would be between $1.3 trillion and $5.3 trillion. The article says the arithmetic checks out. The price target depends on a second layer: the multiplier. Financial markets are not perfectly elastic. When new money enters and old holders do not sell, price gains can exceed the amount of capital that came in. Liu cites a study by two Harvard economists in the U.S. stock market, where every $1 of inflow reportedly added about $5 in market value. Bitcoin has shown a similar pattern, according to the piece. From 2015 to 2017, $1 of net inflow was associated with $4.5 of market-cap growth. From 2018 to 2021, the figure fell to $3.3. From 2022 to 2025, it slipped again to $3.1. River used a conservative 3x multiplier. On that basis, $1.3 trillion to $5.3 trillion of inflows would translate into $5.5 trillion to $17.5 trillion in added market value. Divide that by Bitcoin’s 21 million coin supply and the implied range becomes $250,000 to $840,000 per BTC. Liu also walks through the math step by step. $1.3 trillion times 3 equals $3.9 trillion, which plus the current market cap of roughly $1.6 trillion gives a low-end total of $5.5 trillion. At the high end, $5.3 trillion times 3 equals $15.9 trillion, and adding $1.6 trillion yields $17.5 trillion. Split across 21 million BTC, that comes out to about $262,000 and $833,000, which the report appears to have rounded to $250,000 and $840,000. Liu says the model has three major weaknesses. The first is the multiplier itself. It has been declining across cycles: 4.5, then 3.3, then 3.1. As the market gets larger, each dollar of inflow tends to move price less, and the writer argues that 2.8 or 2.9 would be more realistic than 3.0. The second is an assumption that old holders will stay put. If Bitcoin ever reaches $250,000, will early whales and miners really sit tight? Every bull cycle has seen heavy turnover at higher prices. Even if institutional inflows are treated as net inflows, the real offset may come from ancient BTC holders who sell into strength. The third issue is the base itself. The $333 trillion figure is only a snapshot. River does not say whether the 20% to 40% portfolio mix, or the 2% to 4% allocation, should be read over three years or five. Liu adds another criticism: the inflow range and the multiplier are both derived from past bull markets, so using them to derive a future price is another version of looking at the world through a fixed frame. He notes one more point: Bitcoin has not yet finished being mined, so using 21 million coins is not perfectly exact. But that error would bias the result lower, not higher. Even so, the article says River gets the scarcity argument right. One of the world’s largest financial firms is encouraging people to allocate into an asset that almost nobody owns, while the supply is locked in code and cannot be expanded by a single coin. If demand rises, price is the only valve left. Liu compares that dynamic with past asset manias such as tulips and railroad stocks. The difference, he says, is that Bitcoin’s hard cap is written into the code at 21 million coins. The piece ends by saying that whether $840,000 arrives in five years or not is ultimately secondary. The more important question is whether the path can keep extending, and whether the position can keep compounding over time.