Bitcoin Could Overtake Gold in the Next Bull Run: Binance Founder CZ

Bitcoin will overtake gold, and it could happen as soon as the next bull run, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao told a conference audience in Hong Kong on Thursday.

"I think Bitcoin will, for sure, become more important than gold," Zhao said during a session at Bitcoin Asia billed as "The Bitcoin Century," when asked whether the asset would outrank bullion for sovereign holders.

The obstacle is institutional rather than technical, he argued. Large countries already have mechanisms for valuing gold and holding it, and replacing that apparatus takes years. For those countries to "shift into Bitcoin" will take time, but it will happen, he said, noting that the market value gap between gold and BTC has narrowed to roughly tenfold. 

"I think Bitcoin will overtake gold pretty soon," he said, adding that, "In the next bull run, it could happen." Bitcoin, he added, is "just a much better asset than gold," joking that long-time Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff would disagree.

Zhao told the audience he routinely advises governments to build a crypto reserve, and that his recommendation for how is "pretty simple and it's a little bit self-serving." Strip out stablecoins, take the five largest cryptocurrencies that remain, and weight them by market capitalization. That yields roughly 50% Bitcoin, 10% to 20% Ethereum, and a slice for BNB, the token of the exchange he founded.