While traders were sleeping—honestly, I’d nodded off on the couch with a half-finished mug of oolong—PlanB dropped yet another Stock-to-Flow chart in my feed. The Dutch quant doubled-down on his May proclamation that Bitcoin could print $500,000 by 2028. I rubbed my eyes, re-read the tweet, and then spent the next three weeks chasing data, interviewing anyone who’d pick up the phone, and spelunking through block explorers. Here’s the narrative as it’s solidified in my head—messy edges, nagging doubts, and all.
Here’s What Actually Happened
On May 28th, @100trillionUSD—better known as PlanB—tweeted a neat little heat-map that tied the current halving epoch (2024-2028) to a median target of $500k per BTC. He cited the usual suspects: shrinking issuance, consistent demand growth, and that elegantly simple Stock-to-Flow (S2F) ratio that put him on the map back in 2019.
To be fair, the model’s last cycle prediction (2020-2024) undershot. PlanB aimed for a $55k average; Bitcoin managed ~$34k. A miss, sure, but disturbingly close if you remember the Luna implosion, Three Arrows chaos, and a certain Bahamian exchange that rhymes with SFX. Given the volatility, a 38% deviation is almost forgivable. Traditional macro folks would kill for that kind of ballpark.
I’ve bookmarked the relevant post here for reference, in case Twitter decides to implode again:
“If #Bitcoin S2F holds steady, my base case is $250k post-halving, stretching to a $500k print before the 2028 cycle ends.” —PlanB, X (May 28 2024)
But talk is cheap; I wanted receipts. So I pulled daily closing prices from CoinMetrics, cross-checked halving dates on Bitbo, and built my own crude S2F spreadsheet. The math still works in theory—the ratio jumps from ~56 today to ~112 immediately after the 2028 halving. If demand even flatlines, the model spits out six-figure pricing.
The Missing Variable Nobody Likes Talking About
Scarcity is sexy, but liquidity pays the bills. After the last cycle’s bruising, spot volume on Coinbase is down roughly 63% from the 2021 peak (skewed by wash-trading, I know, but directionally valid). ETF flows could patch the hole—BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) averaged $210 million in net inflows per week this spring—but we don’t have a clean read on whether that pace is secular or just the new-shiny-toy effect.
I asked a buddy who market-makes for one of the top-five OTC desks whether he’s seeing “stealth accumulation.” His exact words:
“Honestly, family offices nibble, but the real whales still prefer private block deals. If there’s an allocation boom coming, it hasn’t shown up in our pipeline yet.”
That’s far from scientific, but it matches Glassnode’s Entity-Adjusted NVT data showing network value climbing faster than transfer value since April. Translation: price may be running a little ahead of organic usage.
So Why Are Presales Like Bitcoin Hyper Suddenly Everywhere?
This part surprised me. In the same week PlanB’s $500k target went re-viral, my inbox was hammered by promo decks for “Bitcoin Hyper” (ticker $BTH), a Layer-2 flavored sidechain promising sub-cent fees and 5,000 TPS. The team is leaning hard on the PlanB narrative: if BTC hits half-a-mil, their scaling solution allegedly becomes indispensable. It’s clever positioning—ride the hype wave without competing directly with BTC.
I dug into their smart contract on GitHub (commit #a3f5b2, if you’re nerdy). The presale wallet controlled 21 million BTH, mirroring Bitcoin’s hard cap, but 40% was earmarked for “ecosystem incentives”. I’m not entirely sure how to reconcile “Bitcoin ethos” with a massive pre-mine, but I’ve seen worse. At publication, the presale had raised 8,900 ETH (~$31 million) according to Etherscan. Not chump change.
Here’s the tangential thought that won’t leave me alone: every mega-cycle spawns a hot new adjunct narrative—2017 had ICOs, 2021 rode NFTs and play-to-earn. Maybe 2024-2028 will be the rise of Bitcoin-adjacent L2s. If so, projects like Bitcoin Hyper could moon even if Bitcoin itself underperforms. Remember how Solana outpaced ETH for stretches even while Ethereum consolidated?
The Macro Backdrop Is the Real Wild Card
The Fed’s June dot plot still shows two cuts penciled in for 2024, but CPI prints are sticky. A higher-for-longer regime might extend dollar strength, historically a headwind for BTC (correlation coefficient ~-0.42 against DXY since 2017 per my R notebook). PlanB’s S2F model, crucially, ignores macro. That’s both its elegance and its Achilles’ heel.
Add in geopolitics—U.S. election freak-outs, the EU’s MiCA rollout, Argentina’s bizarre but intriguing embrace of Bitcoin to settle import invoices—and you’ve got a stew of exogenous variables S2F can’t capture.
I Tried Stress-Testing the $500k Target
Quick math: Bitcoin’s implied market cap at $500k is just shy of $9.8 trillion. That’s gold’s neighborhood. Is that insane? Maybe not. Gold flipped through $15 trillion this year without headlines calling it a bubble.
If we bake in BlackRock’s Larry Fink’s “digital gold” talking points, a 5-10% shift of global gold allocation into BTC could justify $250k alone. The other half? We’d need organic network growth or fiat debasement (I hate that term, but you get the drift).
For giggles, I ran Monte Carlo simulations using daily log returns from 2015-2024. Even at the 75th percentile, the model only coughed up a $340k price by 2028. The $500k scenario sat in the 90th percentile—possible, but tail-heavy. I’m not tossing the forecast; I’m just flagging that we’re leaning on the edges of the probability cone.
Where My Conviction Actually Sits
I’m long BTC (average cost $19,200) and not selling before the next halving. But I’m also stacking cash for fallout opportunities. If PlanB is right, great—I’ll look brilliant at family dinners. If he’s wrong, I’ll deploy into quality names at fire-sale prices. Either path works, so long as I keep ego out of it.
As for Bitcoin Hyper, I passed on the presale. Too many moving parts, too little track record. I’d rather pay a premium on a liquid exchange after mainnet launches and I can see uptime metrics in real-time.
Why This Matters for Your Portfolio
Even if you never read another PlanB tweet, the $500k meme shapes sentiment. Miners model cap-ex on these targets, venture funds pitch LPs with them, and retail gets FOMO-ey. That latent expectation alone can move markets—self-fulfilling prophecy 101.
I’m reminded of March 2020. Everyone said Bitcoin couldn’t possibly reclaim $10k that year after the COVID crash. It closed December above $28k. Sometimes the collective disbelief is the setup.
Last Tangent Before I Let You Go
If you want to track PlanB’s thesis without doom-scrolling Twitter, set up a Glassnode alert for Realized Cap. When realized cap (the cost basis of all coins) starts accelerating, that’s your tell that new money is absorbing supply. In 2020 that metric flipped green weeks before price followed.
Oh, and keep an eye on CryptoFees. If Bitcoin Hyper or any L2 starts showing up in the fee leaderboard, the market will notice long before CNBC does.
Wrapping It Up
I can’t promise PlanB’s half-a-mil target is gospel—models break, humans overfit, and black swans love crypto. But dismissing him outright feels reckless given the past performance of halving cycles and the sheer mindshare he commands.
My working plan? Stay allocated to Bitcoin, monitor ETF flows weekly, and keep dry powder for asymmetrical bets. If $500k shows up, awesome. If not, survival means optionality for the next cycle—and there’s always a next cycle.
Either way, consider this a gentle reminder to step away from the charts now and then. Price targets are fun, but getting some sleep—so you don’t wake up to surprise tweets like I did—may be the real alpha.
