Here's What Would Need to Happen for Bitcoin to Flip Gold Someday
But that's just a price projection based on historical data, and it doesn't take into account gold itself potentially becoming more valuable during the same period. On that front, gold is having a spectacular run of its own at the moment, trading above $5,160 per ounce after roughly doubling in the past year as investors bought it while flocking to safety amid mounting geopolitical and macroeconomic stresses.
Why "the flippening" is the wrong focus
Evaluating Bitcoin's odds of flipping gold is helpful because it forces you to understand exactly how tight its supply is going to be. In practice, there's no law that says Bitcoin and gold can't both do extremely well in the long term, and you might even want to hold both in your portfolio.
However, the risks facing Bitcoin are quite different from those facing gold, and they might make it impossible or much slower for its market cap to become bigger than that of the precious metal. If major economies, particularly China, never fully adopt Bitcoin, or decide to ban it, demand would be sharply constrained. Separately, if Bitcoin's cryptography is undermined somehow such that people's coins can get stolen, it might pulverize all trust in the asset until the issue is fixed.
So don't get too fixated on the coin's prospects of being worth more than gold someday. It has a path of its own, and so far, its fundamental properties have driven its price higher over time.
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Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Here's What Would Need to Happen for Bitcoin to Flip Gold Someday was originally published by The Motley Fool
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