Bitcoin designed to be better than gold

The CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor, said Bitcoin is an asset designed to be better than gold.

In an interview with the Binance regional director, Josh Goodbody, and CEO Changpeng CZ Zhao, Saylor spoke at length about Bitcoin’s new role in traditional finance. 

According to the CEO of MicroStrategy, before March, bitcoin’s narrative as a speculative asset was predominant, and 99% of investors did not like it. 

Then, however, due in part to the financial problems generated by the pandemic, something changed. After the collapse of the financial markets in mid-March, investors went in search of something different, so much so that some even started using the shares of large technology companies, such as Tesla, Apple, Amazon, as a store of value, because they lost confidence in the dollar. 

In this regard Saylor said: 

“Bitcoin is the ultimate synthetic, long-term treasury reserve asset. It’s an engineered safe-haven asset engineered to be superior to gold in all aspects of bearer instruments that’s a store of value”. 

He even explicitly suggested updating Bitcoin’s narrative from a volatile and speculative asset suitable for investing 1% or 2% of one’s capital, to a safe haven and definitive store of value. 

It is worth mentioning that MicroStrategy has adopted bitcoin as its primary store of value this year, so Saylor is not impartial in these judgments. 

Gold vs Bitcoin

The fact is that while gold was not “designed” by anyone to be a good store of value, but emerged spontaneously as such, Bitcoin, on the other hand, was actually designed to have a deflating nature, to be easily exchangeable, to be usable in a free and censorship-resistant way, and to be tamper-proof. 

That is, if Bitcoin keeps its promises, it could actually become a better store of value than gold, both technically and operationally. 

If the narrative change proposed by Saylor were to take place, and many investors were to start considering BTC as a good store of value, then demand could increase a lot, and since the supply is limited, its price could also increase a lot. 

The CEO of MicroStrategy assumes a possible multiplication by a factor of 20 or even 50, particularly from those currently investing in gold or government bonds. 

On the other hand, gold, which earned 23% in 2020 (compared to 170% in BTC), seems in some ways to be an obsolete asset, not in competition with Bitcoin itself.

Saylor says: 

“Gold is defective. It’s an antiquated store of value. It was the best store of value for 5,000 years until we invented the computer… It was a good idea until it became not a good idea”.