Bitcoin - the new Gold?

Bitcoin has gone from internet toy to a $1.8 trillion asset in just over a decade—and in my view, the case that it’s still underowned and undervalued is stronger than ever. In this post we’ll walk through why Bitcoin is a buy today, especially when you compare it to gold, look at its hard-coded supply, and consider how many more people can still easily gain access through ETFs and phone apps.

Here’s a live snapshot of Bitcoin’s price to anchor the discussion:

Stock market information for Bitcoin (BTC)

• Bitcoin is a crypto in the CRYPTO market.
• The price is 90828.0 USD currently with a change of -56.00 USD (-0.00%) from the previous close.
• The intraday high is 91898.0 USD and the intraday low is 90523.0 USD.

1. Bitcoin vs. Gold: The “Digital Gold” Trade

Current market values: gold vs. Bitcoin

Let’s start with raw numbers.

• Bitcoin
  • Price: around $90,000 per BTC. (CoinMarketCap)
  • Circulating supply: ~19.96 million BTC (about 95% of the eventual 21 million). (Coinbase)
  • Market cap: roughly $1.8 trillion. (Coinbase)
• Gold
  • Above-ground stock: roughly 216,000+ tonnes. (oromineral.com)
  • At recent prices around $4,000–$4,300/oz, that implies a total value near $28–30 trillion. (NextBigFuture.com)

In other words, all the Bitcoin in existence is worth only ~6 cents on the dollar compared to all above-ground gold.

What if Bitcoin simply “catches up” to gold?

If Bitcoin’s market value matched gold’s current ~$30 trillion, what would that look like?

• Today: BTC ≈ $1.8T
• Gold: ≈ $30T

At a ~$90k spot price, a 16–17× move implies a theoretical price in the neighborhood of:

• ≈ $1.4–1.6 million per BTC

These are back-of-the-envelope numbers, not a forecast—but they illustrate the asymmetric potential. Even if Bitcoin never fully equals gold and only gets halfway there, you’re still talking about a many-fold increase from today’s levels.

Why the gold comparison matters

Gold has earned its place over thousands of years as:

• A store of value outside the banking system
• A hedge against inflation, currency debasement, and geopolitical uncertainty

Bitcoin was explicitly designed to play a similar role—but in the digital age:

• It’s natively global and digital (no vaults, no armored trucks)
• It can be sent in minutes across borders
• It’s programmable, which opens up use cases gold can’t match

If the market continues to accept Bitcoin as a kind of “digital gold,” there’s a straightforward thesis:

Bitcoin doesn’t need to replace gold; it just needs to close the gap.

Right now, that gap is trillions of dollars wide.

2. Supply: Why Bitcoin’s Scarcity Is So Powerful

Hard cap: 21 million coins, ever

The heart of the Bitcoin investment case is brutally simple:

• Maximum supply: 21,000,000 BTC, coded into the protocol.
• Around 95% of that has already been mined. (Coinbase)

Unlike fiat currencies (which can be expanded at will) or even gold (where more can be mined if the price rises), Bitcoin’s supply curve is known in advance. No committee, central bank, or politician can change it without essentially creating a different asset.

Halvings: programmed “supply shocks”

Every ~4 years, Bitcoin goes through a halving: the block reward paid to miners is cut in half. This slows the rate at which new coins are created.

Key facts:

• Latest halving: April 19–20, 2024, at block 840,000. (Investopedia)
• Block reward was cut from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. (Investopedia)
• Halvings continue roughly every 210,000 blocks until around 2140, when the last BTC is expected to be mined. (The Guardian)

The economic effect is similar to a built-in tightening cycle. Each halving:

1. Reduces new supply coming onto the market
2. Increases scarcity assuming demand is flat or rising
3. Historically has been followed (with a lag) by major bull cycles in Bitcoin’s price (Investopedia)

Past performance isn’t destiny, but the pattern is hard to ignore: every halving has eventually been followed by new all-time highs.

Where we are now in the supply curve

Because we’re already at ~95% mined, the incremental annual supply is tiny compared with:

• The size of global capital markets
• The potential inflows from ETFs, institutions, and retail users

As a very rough intuition:

• At 3.125 BTC per block and ~144 blocks per day, new issuance is only about 450 BTC/day, or ~164,000 BTC/year. (Bitcoin Magazine)
• At ~$90k, that’s roughly $14–15 billion of new supply per year (and shrinking every four years).

In a world where:

• Trillions of dollars sit in cash, bonds, and gold
• A single large asset manager like BlackRock already oversees $10+ trillion in AUM

…soaking up ~$15B/year of new BTC issuance doesn’t require heroic assumptions. If net demand from ETFs, corporates, and global retail exceeds that issuance, the market has to adjust by price going up.

The punchline:

Bitcoin’s supply is not just limited; its new supply is becoming economically trivial relative to potential demand.

3. Adoption: How Many People Own Bitcoin Today?

How many people currently hold Bitcoin?

Because Bitcoin is pseudonymous and wallets don’t map one-to-one to people, estimates vary. But several independent studies give us a range:

• One analysis estimates around 106 million people worldwide own Bitcoin, about 1.3% of the global population. (CoinLedger)
• A separate market-sizing report (using broader methodology that includes exchange accounts and wallet activity) found that by late 2024 there were about 659 million crypto users overall, with Bitcoin owners around 337 million (about half of all crypto owners). (Crypto.com)

So a reasonable takeaway is:

• 100–300+ million people own Bitcoin today, depending on how strictly you define “owner.”
• Even at the high end (~300M), that’s still <4% of the world’s 8+ billion people.

Crypto users vs. Bitcoin users

Zooming out:

• Global crypto ownership is estimated at 6–8% of the world’s population, or ~560–830 million people, and growing fast. (Triple A)
• Bitcoin remains the largest single asset, with roughly half of crypto owners holding BTC. (Crypto.com)

Even if you assume Bitcoin adoption slows and merely creeps toward 10–15% of the global population over the next decade, that would imply:

• Hundreds of millions of new potential holders
• Far more demand competing for an almost-fixed pool of coins

This is the core of the adoption upside:

We are still early in the S-curve. The world is not even close to “everyone who wants Bitcoin already has it.”

4. The ETF & App Revolution: Friction Is Collapsing

Bitcoin used to be a pain to buy. You had to:

• Create an account on a crypto exchange
• Go through KYC, wire funds, learn about private keys and wallets
• Worry about hacks, self-custody mistakes, and confusing UIs

That’s changing—fast.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs: Wall Street pipes now connected

On January 10, 2024, the U.S. SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs, allowing everyday investors to buy Bitcoin exposure in a regular brokerage account or retirement plan. (Congress.gov)

A few key points:

• The ETFs include funds from giants like BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, Franklin Templeton, and others. (SEC)
• Within the first quarter after launch, spot Bitcoin ETFs saw over $12 billion in net inflows, pushing BTC to record highs above $73k. (Investopedia)
• BlackRock’s IBIT has grown into the largest Bitcoin ETF, with tens of billions in assets. (Cointelegraph)

This matters because:

• It makes Bitcoin one click away for every investor already using major brokerages.
• It opens the door for advisors, pension funds, and institutions that aren’t allowed (or willing) to self-custody BTC.
• It standardizes Bitcoin exposure inside 401(k)s, IRAs, and wealth-management platforms.

Analysts estimate hundreds of thousands to over a million investors already hold BTC indirectly via these spot ETFs, on top of on-chain users. (Crypto.com)

And it doesn’t stop with the U.S.:

• Hong Kong has launched spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and continues to license more crypto exchanges. (Reuters)
• Other jurisdictions are exploring or expanding crypto fund offerings as well. (BTC Times)

Phone apps: Bitcoin in your pocket worldwide

While ETFs make Bitcoin easy for developed-market investors, phone apps and local exchanges are doing the same for everyone else:

• Crypto wallets are now commonplace across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as millions of people use Bitcoin and other digital assets as savings tools and payment rails. (CoinLaw)
• Global crypto adoption has surged across countries like India, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Brazil—many of which rank at the top of Bitcoin usage. (CoinLedger)

From a growth perspective:

Every new phone shipped is a potential Bitcoin user, and every new neobank or fintech app is a potential Bitcoin on-ramp.

The friction to acquire Bitcoin has gone from “expert-only” to “tap a button next to your stock or banking app.” That’s a secular tailwind.

5. Putting It Together: Why Bitcoin Looks Like a Buy

Let’s assemble the pieces:

1. Asymmetric upside vs. gold

• Bitcoin’s market cap (~$1.8T) is still a fraction of gold’s ~$30T. (Coinbase)
• If Bitcoin ever attains gold-like status globally, even partially, that implies multi-fold upside from today’s levels.
• Bitcoin doesn’t need to replace gold—it just needs to share the “store of value” pie.

2. Programmed scarcity & shrinking new supply

• Hard cap of 21M BTC is non-negotiable at the protocol level.
• We’re already ~95% of the way there, and new issuance keeps getting cut in half every ~4 years. (Coinbase)
• Annual new supply measured in dollars is small relative to the trillions sloshing around global capital markets; modest net inflows can have outsized price impact.

3. Early-stage adoption with a long runway

• Somewhere between hundreds of millions and maybe a third of a billion people hold BTC—impressive, but still a single-digit percentage of the world’s population. (CoinLedger)
• Crypto overall is ~6–8% global penetration and rising; Bitcoin is the flagship asset in that universe. (Triple A)
• Projections from industry research suggest Bitcoin users could reach over 1 billion by 2030. (CoinLedger)

4. Massive reduction in friction via ETFs and apps

• Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the U.S., Hong Kong and elsewhere have made BTC investable in standard brokerage and retirement accounts. (Congress.gov)
• Smartphone apps, neobanks, and local exchanges are turning Bitcoin into an everyday financial tool in both developed and emerging markets. (CoinLaw)

Put simply:

You now have growing global demand running head-first into a hard-capped, slowing supply. That’s a recipe long-term investors usually want to be on the right side of.

6. Key Risks (And Why They Don’t Break the Thesis)

No responsible investment write-up is complete without the downside.

• Volatility: Bitcoin is still extremely volatile. Drawdowns of 50–80% have happened multiple times and can happen again. (The Week)
• Regulatory risk: While ETF approvals are a green light in some jurisdictions, others may tighten rules, tax treatment, or access. (Congress.gov)
• Technological/competitive risk: Bitcoin faces competition from other cryptoassets and evolving financial technologies.
• Sentiment cycles: Narrative and macro environments (rates, liquidity, risk appetite) can cause large swings in both directions.

Because of this, many investors treat Bitcoin as:

• A small but meaningful allocation in a diversified portfolio (for example, low single-digit percentages, depending on risk tolerance)
• A long-term conviction bet, not a short-term trading vehicle

Nothing here is personal investment advice, but as a thesis for a personal finance site, it’s reasonable to summarize:

For investors with a long time horizon and high risk tolerance, Bitcoin looks like a compelling buy: a scarce, digitally native asset with trillions of potential upside if it continues to mature into “digital gold” and adoption keeps climbing.