The bank's long-term planning document carries a Bitcoin number for the first time in 31 editions. It still leaves the asset out of the correlation models that decide what a portfolio holds.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management has published a long-term return forecast for Bitcoin for the first time, and in the same document explained why that number cannot be turned into a position. The firm's 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions, the 31st annual edition of a report institutional investment committees use to set strategic allocations, puts Bitcoin inside its coverage while keeping it outside the machinery that allocates capital.
The published summary states the split plainly. “For the first time, we put a range on bitcoin returns, though we do not yet include bitcoin in our main covariance matrices,” the firm wrote. Elsewhere in the same summary: “We debut bitcoin coverage, but unstable correlations to other assets impair a strategic allocation.”
The covariance matrix is the part that matters for that conclusion. A return assumption says what an asset might earn; the covariance matrix says how it moves against everything else, and that is the input a portfolio optimizer needs before it can size a holding. An asset with a return forecast and no entry in the matrix can be discussed but not weighted. J.P. Morgan said it has instead built a separate, smaller covariance matrix pairing Bitcoin with a subset of assets in its public markets chapter, which it describes as stopping short of full inclusion.
The headline figure itself is reported as 10% compounded annually over the report's 10-to-15 year horizon, with a bull case of 16.6% and a bear case of an 11.2% annual loss. Those numbers sit in the full report, which is behind a registration wall; The Block and Cointelegraph both read it and agree on them, as does the volatility assumption attached to the forecast, 55% a year.
J.P. Morgan's published summary raises its US large cap equity assumption by 80 basis points to 7.5% and puts global aggregate bonds at 5.3%, the highest in two decades; gold is reported at 5.5%. A 10% assumption therefore sits well above the 7.5% equity and 5.3% bond forecasts in the same document, and it comes with a 55% annual volatility assumption.
That reasoning is stated rather than implied. “The volatility and unstable correlation of assets like bitcoin (BTC) remain an obstacle to their widespread inclusion in portfolios,” the summary says. “Nevertheless, we initiate a long-term return forecast for BTC this year while stopping short of its full inclusion in our covariance matrices.” An expected return can be high and still fail the test a portfolio applies, which is whether the asset improves the whole.
The report also rejects one common argument for holding Bitcoin. Writing about the dollar, the firm calls “the suggestion that broader currency debasement will precipitate a rush into crypto assets” wide of the mark. That is a direct rejection of the debasement case, in the same document that gives Bitcoin a double-digit return assumption.
Not everyone accepts the volatility input. Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, argued the 55% assumption is too high given how Bitcoin's volatility has fallen over the past 15 years, according to The Block. The objection bears directly on the exclusion, because the volatility and correlation inputs are the stated reason for it, and a lower input in a later edition would weaken that reason. The report's authors said the treatment could be revised as volatility falls and correlations stabilize.
What institutions get from this is a citable number from a mainstream source, which they did not have before, attached to an explicit instruction not to treat it as an allocation. A parallel arrived from Switzerland the same day, where FINMA approved the country's first retail Bitcoin fund and attached a warning that the market risk associated with Bitcoin remains very high. Formal recognition and a recommendation to buy are not the same decision.
J.P. Morgan has been building crypto-adjacent infrastructure on its own account, including a deposit token now running on Ethereum for institutional clients. The asset management arm's forecast is a separate exercise from that business and does not signal a change in it.
The assumptions are dated September 30, 2026 and describe a 10-to-15 year horizon, so they say nothing about what Bitcoin does this quarter. The practical change is narrower than the headline number: an asset that was absent from the document for 30 editions now has a return range in it, and an explicit note that the range is not an allocation.
