Bitcoin is evolving and could soon surpass gold in market capitalization, according to Bitget Managing Director and CEO Gracy Chen.
Speaking with Rob Nelson on Roundtable , Chen discussed how the cryptocurrency market is transforming with growing institutional adoption, changing regulations, and new real-world use cases.
"Bitcoin will definitely surpass gold in terms of the market cap, at least for a while, maybe in this year or in the upcoming few years," Chen said. "That means Bitcoin has another two to three times of growth in terms of its price."
At the time of writing, Bitcoin's market cap stands at approximately $1.87 trillion, with BTC trading at $94,210. In comparison, gold's market capitalization is estimated at $19.9 trillion, calculated based on a price of $2,963 per ounce and the total above-ground gold reserves.
Bitcoin would need to increase by approximately 965% (or 10.65x its current market cap) to match gold's total market capitalization of $19.9 trillion.
The changing nature of Bitcoin
Chen explained how Bitcoin’s role has shifted over time. Initially viewed as "digital gold," Bitcoin was considered an anti-risk asset. However, with the approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in 2024, it has become more correlated with traditional financial markets.
"In the early days, [Bitcoin] was much considered as digital gold. Right now, it's still digital gold in my opinion," she said. "But now it's more like a risky asset. It correlates with the US stock market much more than it did before."
She pointed out that institutional adoption has played a significant role in this shift. "There are much more incoming flows from the TradFi space through ETF," she said. "After 2024, the majority of the drive is coming from the US, either from ETF inflows and outflows or from the new administration in terms of regulations and policies around crypto."
The role of blockchain beyond trading
Despite the market’s volatility, Chen remains optimistic about the broader applications of blockchain technology beyond cryptocurrency trading. She highlighted payments as an area where blockchain is already delivering practical benefits.
"Comparing with the traditional paying system, especially if you do cross-border transactions, you use maybe SWIFT code, you use many other banks to achieve that. However, using blockchain in crypto, it's actually much easier and efficient, much cheaper too," she said.
She also pointed to artificial intelligence as another sector where blockchain could drive innovation. However, she noted that many so-called "AI tokens" in crypto today are unsustainable.
"In the web2 world, we see SIK from China, we see ChatGPT, Gemini from Google — everyone is innovating. All these products have real-world use cases," Chen said. "Crypto, we need to see the similar cases for real-world applications for AI."