On Aug. 30, Jan van Eck, the chief executive officer of VanEck, a major investment management company, said that if Bitcoin (BTC 0.68%) gets to be priced at just half the total value of gold, it would reach $400,000. At the same time, he made it clear that he considers the coin a scarce asset that’s essentially digital gold, and that he thinks there’s going to be a consistent demand for it, making that outcome highly plausible.

In other words, if supply keeps tightening while larger and steadier buyers keep showing up, the path of least resistance is up. Here’s what else you need to know about van Eck’s perspective and why you should take his opinion on this topic (very) seriously.

Image source: Getty Images.

Why this call matters

When a mainstream asset manager with more than $100 billion in assets under management (AUM) floats a price like $400,000 for Bitcoin, you should ask two questions: Is the speaker credible? and Is the idea anchored in data? It’s easy to answer yes to both.

On credibility, VanEck manages about $135.8 billion in assets as of July 31, and it has been quick to get exposure to crypto compared with its peers. VanEck filed for a Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) as far back as August 2017, years before today’s spot products.

Another important fact is that VanEck pledged to donate 5% of its spot Bitcoin ETF profits to fund the Bitcoin Core team of developers, putting tangible support behind the network’s resilience. That combination of AUM heft, crypto first-mover history, ETF product footprint, and direct developer funding gives van Eck’s call a lot more weight than a random internet forecast, particularly because his assets are sizable enough and deployed such that it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now let’s examine the quality of the data used in van Eck’s argument.

After the April 2024 halving, mining activity produces just 450 bitcoins per day. Corporate buyers alone are absorbing about 1,755 coins per day on average, roughly four times the daily issuance, with funds and ETFs adding significant inflows on top. Against a mechanically tightening float — coins available for public trading — that absorption rate is exactly the kind of imbalance long-term investors look for.

So the idea that Bitcoin is digital gold is supported by the numbers right now, at least in terms of its scarcity versus incoming supply to the market.

If you want a near-term napkin math check on van Eck’s price target specifically, consider first that Bitcoin recently traded at about $111,000. The gap between today and $400,000 is large, but the mechanism to get there, scarcity, is the exact same one that took the coin from $1 to more than $100,000.

How investors should use this view

Let’s step back for a moment and introduce some skepticism.

Price targets can excite or mislead, even when they’re issued by business leaders or investors at the very apex of their craft. The real utility of a $400,000 call is that it sets a benchmark for the coin’s long-term investment thesis. The thesis is that Bitcoin’s engineered supply constriction and the consolidation of ownership into price-insensitive hands will raise the clearing price for the marginal coin. If that continues, the destination becomes a function of patience and liquidity cycles.

There is another practical takeaway about who is making the call. VanEck does not need Bitcoin to reinvent itself to capture value. It needs the rules to remain clear enough for institutions to keep allocating. The company’s own history shows it can help shape that clarity and sustain the ecosystem, from being an early filer to supporting developers, and over time, its influence could push prices higher than they would have been otherwise.

Investors should also weigh the risks with clear eyes. Macro liquidity tightening, policy surprises, or adverse regulation could interrupt flows into ETFs and corporate treasuries for a time, pressuring prices. It might also be the case that the migration of coins into deep cold storage reduces on-chain activity in ways that occasionally spook investors.

Still, now is a favorable time to dollar-cost average (DCA) into Bitcoin, and van Eck’s price target signifies that capital is increasingly considering the coin a worthy asset to hold forever. Don’t get too fixated on arbitrary forecasts, just keep accumulating.