The chief investment officer (CIO) of crypto asset manager Bitwise believes Bitcoin (BTC) is vastly undervalued and is still just “getting started” until it hits a seven-figure price.

In an interview on the When Shift Happens podcast, Matt Hougan says Bitcoin is still in the early stages of adoption until its market cap is as large as gold’s.

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“And I think once we get to as large as gold, then we can talk about, you know, is it 5x bigger than gold? Is it 3x bigger than gold? Is it 2x bigger than gold? But there’s still a 10x until we match gold.”

According to the Bitwise CIO, Bitcoin is a rare example of a case where a digital version of a physical product is relatively smaller.

“Are physical newspapers bigger than digital newspapers? Is physical advertising bigger than digital advertising? Are DVDs bigger than streaming? I’ve really struggled to come up with even one example.

And so I think until we get to gold level, you’re actually still early. And it’s only after gold that we start counting, like how big could this thing be?

So you have a 10x until you are no longer early.”

Hougan further says institutional investors could inject more than $1 trillion into Bitcoin to balance portfolios now that the crypto industry is part of the global capital markets.

“Imagine what a $1.5 trillion coming into Bitcoin does to the price. Like, who is going to sell? How much will it go up? I think it’ll be really significant. People look at the Bitcoin ETFs (exchange-traded funds) last year. They did $37 billion. People put $37 billion in. The price went up substantially. This is more buying than selling.”

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