Many investors assume that the days of quickly becoming a millionaire by buying and holding Bitcoin (BTC 1.35%) are over, and they’re probably right. The $1.2 trillion asset isn’t about to double in value overnight.On the other hand, there’s still a compelling case to be made that routinely buying and holding Bitcoin can be a major contributor to a sensible wealth-building strategy that involves other assets. Let’s walk through how that approach to becoming a millionaire with the help of Bitcoin might work and why.
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This is a slow-moving asset that’s great for long holds
Bitcoin’s value proposition to investors is that it’s a scarce store of value that can’t be printed or diluted in the way that fiat currencies like the dollar can and often are.
Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist, and the issuance of new coins halves every four years. At the same time, in the long view of things, it benefits from inflation in fiat currencies. Research from Fidelity Digital Assets in March 2026 found that 87% of Bitcoin’s price variation over the past 15 years is explainable by changes in the global M2 money supply, a broad measure of the amount of currency in circulation.
In other words, money keeps being printed while Bitcoin’s supply policies remain fixed. Inevitably, some slice of every newly created dollar, euro, and yen gets parked in scarce assets by investors looking to preserve value, including in categories like gold and real estate, and Bitcoin’s hard supply cap makes it a natural sink for a portion of that capital flow.
Today’s Change(-1.35%) $-849.13Current Price$62,148.00Key Data PointsMarket Cap$1.2TMarket cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.Market cap calculated using publicly traded shares outstanding only. Does not include unlisted, private, or dual-class non-traded shares. Implied market cap may vary.Day’s Range$61886.00 – $64134.0052wk Range$57945.16 – $126079.89Volume31.9B
One big catch is that the above process takes a very long time to play out, and another catch is that the process is no guarantee of Bitcoin’s price climbing during any interval. So, it can decline tremendously during its bear markets — as much as 80% — which means that it doesn’t work very well as a short-term hedge against inflation.
Running the numbers
The asset manager VanEck projects that Bitcoin can grow at a 15% annualized return over the next 25 years. That’s slightly higher than its compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.6% over the last five years, but it’s also much lower than its CAGR of 57.3% over the last 10 years, so it’s probably a reasonable estimate.
Investing $500 per month into Bitcoin for 25 years, assuming that same 15% annual return, would ultimately leave an investor with around $1.4 million in hand, after making $150,000 in contributions. Trim the monthly contribution to $250 and stretch the time horizon to 30 years, and the outcome is essentially the same. Both of those paths would require buying through ugly stretches like the current one.
So could Bitcoin make you a millionaire? If you’re patient, consistent, and if it cooperates, yes, it could. Just be sure to be sufficiently diversified so that its volatility and big downturns don’t sting too much in the meantime.