Bitcoin’s next leg higher sits inside a broader “everything, everywhere, all at once” bull market that echoes the 1950s more than the 1990s—and the underlying engine is fiat debasement that will continue to funnel monetary premiums into neutral reserve assets such as Bitcoin and gold. That is the core of veteran macro analyst and investor Mel Mattison’s thesis in a wide-ranging interview on Milk Road Macro published Monday, October 7.
Mattison, a former fintech executive with 25+ years in finance, argues that investors are misreading the cycle by citing relationships from the 1970s and 1980s instead of the earlier regimes that rhyme more closely with today. “I actually think the most similar decade is the 50s,” he said, noting that the S&P 500’s average annual return then “was over 19%,” outpacing the 1990s.
He described 2024–2025 as an “everything everywhere all at once rally… bonds, stocks, gold, Bitcoin, real estate,” driven by a multi-decade interest-rate cycle and a global “debasement trade” that has finally gone mainstream. “The scariest thing to me right now is that Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are saying the same thing that I was a year ago.”
Within that framework, Bitcoin plays the role of digital gold—one of two “neutral reserve assets” poised, in Mattison’s view, to absorb more monetary premium as the fiat system adapts to rising debt loads and geopolitical realignment. He framed the moment as a “gold war, not a cold war,” pointing to the steady build-up of official gold reserves and alternative settlement rails.
“People do not understand… this is just getting started,” he said of the bull market in both gold and Bitcoin. While he sees gold as temporarily stretched near-term, he reiterated a long-horizon target in line with arguments from other macro commentators: “Do I think [gold is] going to $20,000 in the next 10 to 15 years? Yes, absolutely.” Bitcoin, he suggested, shares in that secular bid as the programmable counterpart: “Bitcoin I see as digital gold and that’s being accepted.”
Mattison’s supercycle call rests heavily on policy architecture. He contends that markets are underpricing the US Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate to maintain “moderate long-term interest rates,” alongside price stability and maximum employment. “Under the statute, the FOMC has three distinct mandates… unemployment, price stability, and making sure that long-term interest rates are moderate,” he said, criticizing the idea that the third leg is secondary.
“The Federal Reserve could… easily take [its balance sheet] to $20 trillion in the next decade without creating massive inflation,” he claimed, emphasizing that money-supply growth and velocity, not the level of public debt per se, drive sustained price pressure.
That policy trajectory, in his telling, is inherently supportive of assets with monetary characteristics. He dismissed recurring fears over foreign selling of Treasuries: “When people talk about… China or Japan [selling], there’s no threat from that,” he said, arguing that domestic absorption—by banks, mutual funds, stablecoin balance sheets, or the Fed itself—can readily backstop issuance.
He called interest payments “stimulus,” preferring they recycle to US holders rather than abroad. In this setting, he believes index-heavy exposure will underperform active positioning in the new winners: “To me the big alpha is… in gold and bitcoin,” with emerging markets also benefiting from easier global financial conditions if YCC or related measures anchor US duration.
Mattison’s historical lens also shapes his risk calendar. He likens the current mix of post-pandemic fiscal-monetary coordination and geopolitical fault lines to the period spanning World War II, the Marshall Plan, and the Korean War. He expects the rally to broaden beyond mega-cap tech as artificial intelligence redistributes value away from traditional SaaS moats, but he also flags a latent social-cohesion shock—an eventual phase when “not only do you want to reduce, you want to just get out of risk… even gold.”
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At press time, BTC traded at $122,451.
