Damien Courvalin, managing director of energy research at Goldman Sachs, argues that Bitcoin is better than gold as a store of value.
Summary
Bitcoin better than gold: analysis by Goldman Sachs managing director
This is at least what the US investment bank’s top manager told Bloomberg:
“The value of crypto is its network, just like the value of oil is the fact that it’s consumed. Gold, like diamonds and art, doesn’t have that. It’s just a pure defensive asset that can outperform over a significant period of time”.
Goldman’s head of energy research further added in the interview while discussing the state of the metals market:
“We’ve argued historically that crypto and gold do not have to cannibalize each other”.
The discussion was specifically about how assets other than gold, such as cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, are being used by investors to hedge against inflation.
“We’ve argued historically that crypto and gold do not have to cannibalize each other”.
This was the manager’s conclusion, stating that China has seen a large increase in gold purchases since the government ban on cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin as a store of value
The statements made by the manager of Goldman Sachs, a bank which has recently been looking at cryptocurrencies with renewed interest, concern a question which has long been debated: whether Bitcoin can actually replace gold as a store of value.
At a time when inflation is rising alarmingly around the world, particularly in the US, interest in gold and Bitcoin is inevitably rising.
Both gold and Bitcoin prices are near their highs.
In October this year, the US investment bank JP Morgan said that institutional investors were also beginning to take an interest in Bitcoin as a better hedge against inflation.
According to its Markets Insider report for the last week of October, the trend of large flows of money moving out of gold and into Bitcoin has resurfaced strongly in recent weeks.
According to the bank, more than $10 billion has flowed out of ETFs into purchases of gold or gold-related instruments since the beginning of the year, while more than $20 billion has flowed into Bitcoin funds.
According to CoinShares, digital asset investment products saw inflows of $174 million in the first week of November, marking the twelfth consecutive week of inflows. Since the beginning of the year, inflows into digital assets would have stood at $8.9 billion so far this year, compared to $6.7 billion in all of 2020.
Even the famous financial billionaire Ray Dalio, a few days ago, spoke to CNBC about Bitcoin as a digital store of value on a par with gold.
“I own a very small amount of bitcoin. I’m not a big owner. There are certain assets that you want to own to diversify the portfolio, and bitcoin is something like a digital gold”.