Bitcoin not digital gold, says Grayscale

The cryptocurrency’s design, capped supply, independence from governments and a decentralized network, gives it the long-term qualities of a store of value, the firm said

Bitcoin’s decline to nearly $60,000 earlier this month looked familiar, not to gold bugs, but to tech investors, crypto asset manager Grayscale said in a Monday report.

As high-growth software stocks sold off, bitcoin dropped in near lockstep, reinforcing the view that, for now, the world’s largest cryptocurrency trades more like an emerging technology than a mature store of value, the report said.

The cryptocurrency’s design, capped supply, independence from governments and a resilient, decentralized network, gives it the long-term qualities of a store of value. But at just 17 years old, bitcoin is still early in its monetary journey, especially compared with gold’s millennia-long history, the firm argued.

Bitcoin can be considered a long-term store of value: the network will likely continue operating well beyond our lifetimes and the asset may retain its value in real terms, wrote head of research Zach Pandl.

The crypto’s claim to being digital gold has looked increasingly thin in recent months. Rather than serving as a safe haven, it has dropped sharply from its highs and moved in tandem with risk assets as investors turned defensive.

At the same time, physical gold has soared to record levels, drawing inflows just as bitcoin saw capital exit. The split has weakened the case that the cryptocurrency reliably holds value during market stress, suggesting that scarcity alone has yet to make it behave like gold when protection matters most.

Investing in bitcoin today is fundamentally a bet on adoption, Pandl said. Until bitcoin is widely accepted as a global monetary asset, its price will likely remain sensitive to risk appetite, rising and falling with growth-oriented portfolios rather than acting as a hedge during market stress.