JPMorgan Chase's money managers think the best investment of the next decade could be the one their boss once called a "pet rock."
JPMorgan Asset Management, the investment arm of America's largest bank, said this week that it expects Bitcoin to generate an annual return of about 10% over the next 10-15 years.
That's more than it expects from U.S. stocks , at 7.5%, and nearly twice what it sees for gold , at 5.5%.
The forecast sits in the firm's 2027 Long-Term Capital Market Assumptions , a yearly report that big pension funds and endowments use to plan their portfolios.
It has been published for 31 years. This is the first time Bitcoin has been in it.
JPMorgan isn't telling anyone to buy it, though.
The same report says Bitcoin swings about three times as much as the stock market and keeps it out of the firm's model portfolios.
Related: JPMorgan's answer to the stablecoin threat is here
Bitcoin's 10% return tops the list
JPMorgan Asset Management expects Bitcoin to return about 10% a year over the next 10 to 15 years, according to the report's assumptions table.
No other major investment on that table comes close. The firm expects U.S. real estate investment trusts to return 8.2% a year and U.S. small-company stocks 7.7%.
Large U.S. stocks, the kind that make up the S&P 500 , come in at 7.5%.
U.S. bonds are at 5.6% and gold at 5.5%.
The stock forecast itself went up this year. The firm raised its large-cap estimate to 7.5% from 6.7% . Gold's estimate didn't move.
The catch is in the next column over.
JPMorgan puts Bitcoin's volatility, a measure of how much its price swings, at 55%. Large U.S. stocks sit at 18% and gold at 17.2%. By the firm's own numbers, Bitcoin moves about three times as much as the stock market.
That's also why the report lists two return figures for Bitcoin. Its simple average return is 20.9%.
The 10% figure accounts for the damage that deep drops incur over time, and it's the number JPMorgan uses for comparison.
Watch this video to understand JPMorgan's crypto stance:
A forecast, not a recommendation
The firm says Bitcoin is "not included as an allocation," meaning it isn't recommending any portion of a portfolio go into it.
Bitcoin also isn't part of the report's main portfolio models.
JPMorgan analyzed it separately with a smaller group of public market assets.
It said Bitcoin's price swings, and the way it moves unpredictably against stocks and bonds, make it hard to build into a long-term plan.
The report also pushed back on a common argument from crypto supporters: that a weakening U.S. dollar will push investors into digital assets in large numbers.
Gold's forecast looks tame after its year
Gold's 5.5% forecast follows one of the precious metal's most volatile stretches in recent memory.
Gold hit a record $5,405 an ounce on Jan. 29, according to the World Gold Council , an industry body funded by gold miners.
By late June it had fallen to about $4,072, roughly 25% below that peak. In its mid-year outlook, published July 1, the council said gold would likely stay range-bound near $4,100 unless something shifted in the economy or interest rates.
JPMorgan's commodities researchers are more bullish. In a June 9 outlook , JPMorgan Global Research forecast gold at $6,000 an ounce by the end of 2026, down from the $6,300 it predicted in February. It sees prices near $6,300 by the end of 2027.
The two JPMorgan views aren't really in conflict. The research team is calling prices over the next year or so. The asset management report is estimating average returns over a decade, starting from where prices are now.
Central banks have been a steady source of demand. They've bought about 1,000 tonnes of gold a year since 2022, the World Gold Council said, compared with a long-term average of about 600 tonnes.
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New money is finding its way into Bitcoin
On the Bitcoin side, much of this year's attention has been on who is buying.
Fidelity Digital Assets , the crypto unit of asset manager Fidelity, published research on Oct. 20 on one newer source of demand.
Companies are selling perpetual preferred stock, a type of share that pays investors steady income, and using the money to buy Bitcoin. Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy , started the trend in early 2025 .
Those products had bought 135,979 Bitcoin as of Oct. 5, according to Fidelity. That's more than 0.5% of Bitcoin's total supply, accumulated in just over a year.
It's still well behind the pace of spot Bitcoin ETFs , which gathered 888,185 Bitcoin in their first year after launching in January 2024.
Those ETFs held about 12% of all Bitcoin as of March, according to asset manager VanEck .
Bitcoin's most recent record came in October 2025, when it rose above $125,000, Fidelity noted.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $82,423.
Jamie Dimon's bank changes its tune
Not everyone in crypto missed the irony.
Matt Hougan, chief investment officer of Bitwise , a major global crypto asset manager, reacted to the report on X.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight at you, then they add you to their Long-Term Capital Markets Assumptions paper and predict you'll be the best-performing asset of the next decade."
He has a point. Over five years, JPMorgan has gone from mocking Bitcoin to measuring it.
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2021 to 2024:CEO Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin "worthless," and later a "pet rock."
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May 2025:The bank opened the door, letting clients buy Bitcoin while refusing to hold it for them.
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2026:Dimon's shareholder letter named stablecoins among "a whole new set of competitors." By then, JPMorgan Asset Management was already running a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, a fund whose shares exist as digital tokens .
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October 2026:The same asset management arm gave Bitcoin its first long-term return forecast, a day after the bank put its digital dollar, JPM Coin , on Ethereum .
None of this means Dimon has warmed up to Bitcoin. He has kept his personal criticism even as the bank expanded its crypto work.
But the firm that once dismissed Bitcoin now puts it in the same table as stocks and gold, and on paper, Bitcoin comes out ahead.
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This story was originally published by TheStreet on Oct 20, 2026, where it first appeared in the MARKETS section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
