Bitcoin could overtake gold as 10x gap narrows, CZ says

Bitcoin's roughly 10x market-value gap to gold could close in the next bull cycle, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao told the Bitcoin Asia audience.

"I think bitcoin will overtake gold pretty soon," Zhao said. "There's only like a 10x difference right now. So who knows, in the next bull run it could happen."

The forecast arrives as Bitcoin's trading behavior converges with the precious metal. Glassnode data shows Bitcoin's 90-day correlation with gold climbed to about 0.57 from 0.21 in March, while its correlation with the Nasdaq-100 fell to 0.22 from 0.57 over the same stretch. Other estimates put the bitcoin-gold correlation near 0.59, the highest since 2020.

That shift matters because Bitcoin has historically traded like a high-risk technology asset during periods of market stress. A stronger relationship with gold suggests investors increasingly treat BTC as a monetary hedge rather than a speculative trade.

Matching gold's total market value would put Bitcoin at roughly $1.86 million per coin, according to an estimate by Mexican businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego. "It is still very early," Salinas wrote on X.

Zhao sees sovereign adoption as the decisive driver. "If bitcoin becomes a strategic reserve asset for nations, does it eventually become more important than gold? For sure," he said. "I think Bitcoin will for sure become more important than gold."

The obstacle, he argued, is institutional inertia rather than Bitcoin itself. Central banks and governments already run mature systems for valuing, storing, and managing gold; rebuilding those processes around crypto could take years. "For them to shift into bitcoin will take some time," Zhao said. "But it will happen. And bitcoin is just a much better asset than gold."

Zhao sees only one meaningful threat to the thesis: another digital asset surpassing Bitcoin before it catches gold. "There's a very small chance something better than bitcoin takes over," he said, adding that current evidence suggests the probability is small.

Gold parity would imply a Bitcoin price far above any previous cycle target. If governments begin treating Bitcoin as reserve collateral while its trading behavior continues converging with gold, the comparison becomes harder for traditional markets to dismiss.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.