Speaking at the Digital Assets Forum in London, Bradley Duke, Managing Director and Head of Europe at the digital asset management firm said that gold "is a better cushion" when markets are falling, while BTC offers greater upside during rebounds.
"One is more to the upside risk and the other is more protecting against the downside of uncertainty," Duke said.
When asked about why gold had proven more popular than Bitcoin of late, Duke pointed to "muscle memory," with investors flocking to a safe haven asset that has existed for thousands of years.
"Allocators and countries have bought gold in this way for hundreds of years and will continue to do that until there is the trust established in this new better money, which is Bitcoin," he added. "But that takes time."
Bitcoin’s “four-year cycle”Anatoly Crachilov, CEO of Nickel Digital, said the supply of new BTC has been "completely dwarfed by ETF flows, by basis trades and by treasury acquisitions."
Duke argued that Bitcoin was "growing up,” and “bootstrapping itself to become a macro asset for the long term.” Where initially, the only Bitcoin investors were "cypherpunks and what we call OGs now,” he added, “today we see sovereign states investing in Bitcoin."
The managing partner of Fifth Era Blockchain Coinvestors, Matthew Le Merle, admitted that Bitcoin's recent contraction was "very challenging," especially for investors who bought at the top.
However, he argued that a more pressing matter is turning Bitcoin into "a global peer-to-peer cash" at a time when only a few thousand top-tier blockchain developers exist worldwide, and many risk being drawn to alternative industries such as artificial intelligence.
"If you're investing because you think you can time the market because you think there's a cycle and you want to trade and make a quick buck, you're in the wrong room," he warned. "That's not what this is about."
