🪙 HAL THINKS: Gold vs Bitcoin - No Contest. And Never Will Be….
One is forged in the belly of stars. The other in a mystery forum post from 2008. Guess which one central banks hoard in vaults?
Every few months, another crypto evangelist declares that Bitcoin is the new gold—faster, smarter, more modern, and totally unstoppable. And yet, here we are, 15 years on… and central banks keep hoarding gold while the average Bitcoin holder still can’t remember their seed phrase.
Here’s the inconvenient truth: there will never be real competition between gold and Bitcoin—because despite their surface-level similarities, they belong to different species entirely. One is elemental. The other is ideological.
🔑 “Not your keys, not your coins”… So no one has any coins
Let’s start with the myth of ownership. Only 15% of Bitcoin holders actually self-custody their coins. That means nearly 6 out of 7 people are just renting their digital gold from third parties—exchanges, ETFs, sovereign custodians. So much for decentralised freedom.
Compare that to gold. Physical, hold-in-your-hand, stash-it-under-the-bed gold. If you buy it, you own it. If someone steals it, it’s called burglary. If a crypto exchange collapses, it’s called “market volatility.”
Even the pros aren’t walking the talk. Institutional investors now hold over $27 billion in Bitcoin ETFs. That’s not decentralisation—that’s Wall Street in a blockchain hoodie.
💣 Crypto’s Custody Crisis: Hacks, Heists, and Hype
In 2024, $2.2 billion was stolen from crypto platforms. That’s billion, with a “B.”
Notable hits included:
$1.4 billion from Bybit (Feb 2025)
$300 million from DMM Bitcoin (May 2024)
And let’s not forget the Mt. Gox debacle, which is still being resolved… a decade later.
By contrast, if your gold gets stolen from a vault, you don’t lose faith in gold. You change your vault.
🧙‍♂️ Gold Has No Founder. Bitcoin Has a Ghost.
Gold’s origin story? Thermonuclear fusion, planetary formation, and 5,000 years of human history.
Bitcoin’s? An anonymous coder named Satoshi, who vanished in 2010, possibly holding hundreds of thousands of coins. We’re not sure who he (she? they?) was. We just know that if those wallets ever move, the market might implode.
So let’s recap:
You don’t know who created Bitcoin.
You don’t know who holds the oldest coins.
And you definitely don’t know who’s spoofing the next pump-and-dump.
Still sound like a store of value?
📉 Volatility vs Stability: One Wobbles, One Waits
Gold has averaged a steady 10% return over two decades. It shines brightest when the world’s on fire—recessions, wars, inflation.
Bitcoin, meanwhile, behaves like it’s on a sugar high. Average 5-year volatility? 44.6%, compared to gold’s 17.4%. You can make a fortune—or lose it by lunchtime.
If gold is the tortoise, Bitcoin is the caffeinated rabbit with a gambling problem.
đź‘‘ The Institutional Litmus Test
Gold:
Central banks buy 1 in every 8 ounces mined.
The U.S. alone holds 8,133.5 tonnes.
Every major economy keeps it as insurance against fiat disaster.
Bitcoin:
Traded on exchanges rife with wash trading (95% volume fake?).
Manipulated by anonymous whales and Discord channels.
Regulated like the Wild West, with different sheriffs in every town.
You tell me which one says “safe haven” and which one says “Vegas.”
🧱 Tangible, Immutable, Elemental
Gold has industrial use. Jewellery demand. Cultural weight. Centuries of infrastructure.
Bitcoin is lines of code, reliant on power, connectivity, and a fragile agreement that it’s worth something. That’s not to say Bitcoin is useless—it has its place, especially in failing economies—but it’s not a replacement for gold.
And it never will be.
🧊 Final Word: Gold Doesn’t Blink. Bitcoin Blinks Twice a Second.
Bitcoin is brilliant. But brilliance isn’t the same as permanence.
It can be hacked. It can be banned. It can be forked, fractioned, lost, or inflated through protocol change. Its founder disappeared. Its price is a hostage to headlines, halvings, and hashtags.
Gold? Gold does nothing. And that’s exactly the point.
No blockchain. No buzzwords. No backup phrase to forget.
It’s been wealth longer than most nations have existed—and it never needed to prove itself on Twitter.
Bitcoin wants your belief.
Gold doesn’t even ask.
