{"id":438335,"date":"2026-09-18T07:40:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/seven-ways-to-value-bitcoin-from-network-adoption-to-stock-to-flow-438335\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T07:40:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T00:40:32","slug":"seven-ways-to-value-bitcoin-from-network-adoption-to-stock-to-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/market-news\/seven-ways-to-value-bitcoin-from-network-adoption-to-stock-to-flow-438335\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven ways to value Bitcoin, from network adoption to stock-to-flow"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Seven ways to value Bitcoin, according to Ned Davis Research<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Bitcoin has risen 26% over the past four months, and its climb last month came as senators debated the Clarity Act. Even after that legislation failed in the Senate, Bitcoin held onto most of those gains, according to Dow Jones Newswires (via MarketWatch). But the question of what Bitcoin is actually worth remains one of the more contested debates in markets, precisely because, unlike a stock or a bond, it has no cash flow, earnings, or balance sheet to anchor a valuation.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Ned Davis Research&#8217;s chief alternatives strategist, John Laforge, addressed that gap directly in a note published Wednesday, cited by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marketwatch.com\/story\/bitcoin-could-be-headed-for-230-000-in-less-than-a-decade-here-are-seven-ways-to-value-the-crypto-d1110aab\" rel=\"follow\">Dow Jones Newswires<\/a>, laying out seven distinct approaches to valuing the cryptocurrency, each suited to different circumstances and each with its own weaknesses. The firm&#8217;s own longer-term view, separate from Laforge&#8217;s methodology piece, sees Bitcoin reaching around $170,000 by 2030 and as high as $230,000 by 2035.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Why it matters<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For readers newer to crypto, the value of walking through these methods is less about landing on a single &#8220;correct&#8221; price and more about understanding that different valuation lenses answer different questions, and mixing them up is a common source of confusion. A model built for the coming quarters is not designed to answer where Bitcoin sits in a five-year cycle, and a metric that reflects miner sentiment is not the same as one measuring investor demand.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The seven approaches<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">According to Laforge&#8217;s note, cited by Dow Jones Newswires:<\/p>\n<ul dir=\"ltr\">\n<li>Network adoption. Laforge considers this the method best suited to Bitcoin specifically, since it is the only one built entirely from Bitcoin&#8217;s own data rather than a comparison to something else. It tracks direct and ETF-based ownership, along with the number of addresses holding a balance and transacting daily.<\/li>\n<li>Comparison to similar assets, particularly gold. This treats Bitcoin and gold as related because both function as bearer assets, meaning ownership does not depend on a third party&#8217;s cooperation, in a financial system otherwise built on credit and intermediaries.<\/li>\n<li>Money-supply growth. Laforge flagged this as likely the most useful lens for the next few quarters. Ned Davis Research found Bitcoin tends to respond positively when money-supply growth runs above 4%, and to struggle when the money supply contracts by a similar margin.<\/li>\n<li>Cost of production. This works best as a sentiment gauge rather than a price target, and it can signal when miners are likely to sell. CoinShares put the average cost to produce one Bitcoin among listed miners at roughly $75,500 in the second quarter. Laforge noted the metric becomes genuinely useful when production cost sits meaningfully above the market price for an extended stretch, since that is what pushes financially stretched miners into forced selling and can mark a cycle low.<\/li>\n<li>Risk-based position sizing. Rather than a price target, this approach asks how much Bitcoin an investor should hold. Based on its price history, Laforge found a 1% portfolio allocation adds roughly 2% to total portfolio risk, a relationship that scales up sharply, with a 4% allocation translating to about 14% of total risk.<\/li>\n<li>Adoption cycle analysis. Laforge described this as an inexact approach that works best alongside several other measuring techniques rather than as a standalone method.<\/li>\n<li>Stock-to-flow. One of the more widely followed models, it divides existing Bitcoin supply by the amount added each year. It is also the method Laforge is most skeptical of, noting its price estimates have missed by hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years. In his view, the model overweights supply while underweighting demand, and demand simply has not grown fast or high enough to justify some of its more aggressive projections.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">What readers should watch or consider<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">No single method here is being presented as definitive, including by Laforge himself. The practical takeaway is to match the method to the question being asked: network adoption and money-supply growth for a read on Bitcoin&#8217;s own fundamentals over the coming quarters, cost of production as an early-warning sentiment signal around miner capitulation, and position-sizing math for portfolio construction rather than price discovery. Stock-to-flow&#8217;s recent track record is a useful reminder that popularity and predictive accuracy are not the same thing.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">What could change the interpretation<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Ned Davis Research&#8217;s own long-term price targets, cited above, come from separate analysis and should not be read as the output of any one of these seven methods. If money-supply growth data or ETF and address-level adoption figures move meaningfully in the coming months, that would test Laforge&#8217;s view on which methods matter most right now.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">What to watch next<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Watch money-supply growth data given Laforge&#8217;s view that it is the most relevant gauge for the coming quarters, along with Bitcoin ETF flow and address-adoption figures as a read on network adoption. If Bitcoin&#8217;s market price pushes meaningfully below the miner production-cost estimate of roughly $75,500 for a sustained period, that would be a classic signal, per Laforge&#8217;s own framework, of potential miner capitulation and a possible cycle low.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>                            This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seven ways to value Bitcoin, according to Ned Davis Research Bitcoin has risen 26% over the past four months, and its climb last month came as senators debated the Clarity Act. Even&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-market-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.swingfish.trade\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}