Binance Founder CZ Predicts Bitcoin Could Surpass Gold in…

Binance co-founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao used an appearance at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong on August 27 to argue that Bitcoin will ultimately outrank gold, saying he expects the cryptocurrency to surpass the metal's market value during the next major bull cycle. "I think Bitcoin will, for sure, become more important than gold," he said during a session titled "The Bitcoin Century."

Zhao conceded that such a shift would not happen quickly. Countries have spent decades building infrastructure around gold, including systems for custody, valuation, reserves and trading. He argued, however, that Bitcoin's combination of digital scarcity, transferability and global accessibility gives it an edge that could eventually erode gold's monetary role.

The scale of the task is considerable. Zhao put gold's market value at roughly ten times Bitcoin's, a ratio that varies widely depending on how the global above-ground gold stock is valued. Bitcoin traded near $79,700 at the time of his remarks, implying a market capitalization of about $1.6 trillion — far below gold's estimated total.

Bitcoin's recent price action has reinforced the "digital gold" narrative. The asset crossed $80,000 on August 25 and had gained more than 25% in the week before Zhao's appearance, as worries over currency debasement, government debt and U.S. Treasury intervention drove investors toward scarce assets. Gold, meanwhile, climbed above $4,600 an ounce.

A case for diversified sovereign reserves

Beyond price, Zhao expects governments to gradually add cryptocurrencies to strategic reserves as regulatory and custody frameworks mature. For countries building such reserves, he suggested holding the largest non-stablecoin cryptocurrencies weighted broadly by market capitalization. Under that approach, more than half the portfolio would go to Bitcoin, roughly 10% to 20% to Ethereum, and smaller allocations to other major assets including BNB — a departure from a Bitcoin-only strategy.

He has separately predicted Bitcoin could one day reach $1 million, though he did not tie that target to the next bull cycle or give a date. With a supply cap of about 21 million coins, a $1 million price would imply a theoretical fully diluted value near $21 trillion. He offered no mathematical model for when Bitcoin's capitalization might exceed gold's, or what price gold would trade at when it did.

Gold's advantages remain substantial: thousands of years of monetary history, deep central-bank ownership, established global markets and significant non-investment demand from jewellery and industry, with central banks collectively holding tens of thousands of tonnes. Bitcoin, by contrast, has existed only since 2009 and remains far more volatile. Zhao framed sovereign adoption as a multi-year process rather than an imminent migration.