Will Bitcoin ever grow exponentially again?

It’s Bitcoin Pizza Day. Behind the memes, plenty of users have a serious question. Can Bitcoin’s period of explosive growth ever repeat?

Sixteen years ago, an independent programmer named Laszlo Hanyecz ordered two pizzas from a Papa John’s on Atlantic Boulevard in Jacksonville, Florida. Ordinarily, it would have been an unremarkable takeaway order. What made it historic was the payment: Hanyecz paid 10,000 Bitcoin for the pizzas - worth roughly $41 at the time.

Hanyecz was one of Bitcoin’s earliest developers and contributed code to the project itself, including some of the first experiments with GPU mining. What he could not foresee was how dramatically Bitcoin’s value would rise in the years that followed.The question is, can that pattern possibly repeat itself? In 16 years’ time, will we be sharing memes about people who sold at $70,000?  Or are the days of 1000x firmly behind us?

A decade of impressive growth

Bitcoin’s growth over the past decade has been one of the most dramatic examples of exponential adoption in modern financial history. When Bitcoin launched in 2009, it had effectively no market value. By 2013, it briefly crossed $1,000 for the first time. 

In 2017, it surged close to $20,000 during the first major retail-driven crypto bull market. By 2021, Bitcoin reached nearly $69,000, and in 2025 it climbed above $120,000 amid accelerating institutional adoption and inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs.

Adoption as a driver

This growth has not been driven by price alone. On-chain activity and adoption metrics have expanded significantly over time. According to Dune Analytics, the Bitcoin network now processes millions of weekly transactions and maintains millions of active addresses.

Institutional adoption has also accelerated Bitcoin’s expansion. The launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States in 2024 marked a major turning point. By mid-2025, US spot Bitcoin ETFs had attracted more than $50 bln in cumulative inflows, with major financial firms such as BlackRock participating directly in the market.

Will that repeat again?

The big question many in the crypto community are asking is whether Bitcoin will ever repeat its past pace of growth. And this is where opinions differ.

Last month, Michael Saylor, head of Bitcoin custodian Strategy, reiterated an ultra-bullish long-term outlook for Bitcoin, projecting that Bitcoin could eventually reach $10 mln per coin.

Tom Lee, head of Ethereum treasury firm BitMine, repeatedly reaffirmed one of the most bullish near-term institutional BTC targets during early 2026 and maintained his famous $250,000 Bitcoin target.

Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, also remained one of the strongest institutional Bitcoin bulls throughout early 2026.

Meanwhile, skeptics are predicting Bitcoin’s collapse from the current levels.

Peter Schiff, a longtime Bitcoin critic, repeatedly warned of a major BTC collapse during early 2026. “Bitcoin could crash to $20,000 or lower.”

“There is no organic use case reason for Bitcoin to slow or stop its descent,” Michael Burry, an investor known for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, claimed, adding that if the Bitcoin price plunges to $50,000, BTC mining companies that secure the network and process transactions in exchange for fees and newly minted bitcoins could face bankruptcy.

1inch doesn't comment on price movements, and we never give financial advice. And you probably have your own take on this anyway.  What we're interested in is utility. What excites us about DeFi isn't asset price fluctuation. It's the capacity this technology has to transform access to finance, for everyone around the world, and free us all to take true control of our assets.

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