Bitcoin isn’t jumping around like it used to. JPMorgan says the wild swings have cooled off. At the start of 2025, Bitcoin’s volatility sat at 60%. Now it’s around 30%. That’s not just a stat for nerds, that drop could pull big institutional investors back into the space. The kind that dipped the hell out when Bitcoin kept acting like a drunk teenager. Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, a strategist at JPMorgan, said Thursday that if Bitcoin’s volatility keeps falling and starts to match more traditional assets like gold, then investment allocations could follow. “Expect that the allocations to Bitcoin by institutional investors could match those of competing asset classes such as gold if there is convergence in volatilities,” he wrote. Right now, that convergence is real. According to him, the gap between gold’s and Bitcoin’s volatility is “the lowest on record.” Corporate pullback helps tighten volatility There’s a reason this is happening. Over the past year, a lot of corporate treasurers have been yanking their Bitcoin out of circulation. That’s not some small event. According to JPMorgan, this “intense withdrawal” has had a real effect. More coins are being held passively. Less trading. Less panic selling. Less hype buying. That’s been working like a brake on the madness. These treasurers, mostly copycat versions of MicroStrategy, have actually grabbed more than 6% of Bitcoin’s entire supply. They’re also getting added into global equity indices. That gives them even more legitimacy and more eyes. JPMorgan says this trend is “helping to make Bitcoin more attractive from a valuation point of view.” It all comes back to risk. Panigirtzoglou explains it clearly: institutional investors don’t like throwing their cash at anything that sucks up too much risk capital. He said: “The reason is that, for most institutional investors, the volatility of each class matters in terms of portfolio risk management and the higher the volatility of an asset class, the higher the risk capital consumed by this asset class.” Translation: calmer coins mean more comfortable investors. Bitcoin’s current market cap sits at about $2.2 trillion. To match gold’s $5 trillion in private sector investment, but adjusted for volatility, Bitcoin would need to climb 13% from where it is now. That would push the price up to around $126,000. That number isn’t just pulled from thin air. It’s only a little above the record Bitcoin already set last weekend. Right now, though, Bitcoin’s price is lagging behind. Panigirtzoglou said, “The gap between the Bitcoin price and our volatility-adjusted comparison to gold shifted from highly positive territory at the end of 2024,” back when it was around $36,000, “to negative territory currently,” meaning the current price is roughly $16,000 too low. That’s a big gap. According to him, that gap means one thing: “some upside potential for Bitcoin currently.” As of Thursday, Bitcoin was trading about 10% lower than its recent all-time high. So it’s close. But not quite there. Sign up to Bybit and start trading with $30,050 in welcome gifts
