As Bitcoin has shown life the last several days and rose above $7000, the term “digital gold” has been repeated many times in journalistic publications, tweets, crypto forums and even on TV.
Gabor Gurbacs, director of digital asset strategies at VanEck/MVIS appeared on CNBC’s “Futures Now” and opined on just how big Bitcoin could get. Gurbac, whose expertise is in creating secure, liquid, investable funds, notes that many experts and enthusiasts have been predicting that Bitcoin will be used in the way gold has been traditionally used to mitigate risk and sees a huge windfall coming to the Bitcoin market.
“Gold today has around $7 trillion outstanding. If you take, say, 5 to 10 percent — I’ll let everyone do the math — bitcoin has upside,” Gurbacs said. If Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies become a staple in the near future, Bitcoin could be the benchmark for the backing of the market and the asset that all digital assets have their value based on.
Gurbacs explained, “Bitcoin is used as digital gold today. It’s a de-risk asset. Basically, if someone wants to outlay systematic risk, then one would go to access gold or digital gold.”
Before society can reach a period of mass adoption of cryptocurrency, the technology must be fully ironed out and a confident consumer base that will spend their digital assets daily will need to emerge.
With an efficient product and confident user base, institutional investors will start pouring into the cryptocurrency market.
Gurbacs and the team at VanEck/MVIS think these stipulations will be met in regards to Bitcoin. “We believe that there is sufficient liquidity. We believe there is pricing benchmarks. We believe there is a way to integrate bitcoin into the financial ecosystem that we are used to for ETFs, stocks, bonds and commodities.”
A wave of institutional investors and mass adoption could even lead to “digital gold” taking a chunk out of the market for actual, physical gold.
