VanEck’s Matthew Sigel said Bitcoin is in an early recovery, with gold as the benchmark for its rise.
- VanEck’s Matthew Sigel said the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio leaves room for Bitcoin to double against the metal.
- He said quantum computing is not a reason to sell Bitcoin.
- VanEck’s medium-term target is half of gold’s market capitalization.
Bitcoin (BTC) could potentially double against gold, with VanEck using half of gold’s long-term market capitalization as the “north star” that would equate to a $500,000 price target for BTC, said Matthew Sigel, the firm’s Head of Blockchain Research.
In a Bitcoin Magazine interview published Saturday, Sigel said Bitcoin was in the early stages of a recovery. He described the latest rally as a “short covering, sellers exhaustion rally” and said it was backed by “real money” through exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows.
Sigel said Bitcoin’s correlation with gold is now at a multi-year high, meaning the two have been moving together more closely than they have in years. He pointed to the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio, which measures how many ounces of gold one Bitcoin can buy.
Gold Benchmark Supports Long-Term Upside Case
Sigel explained how it fell to about 16 or 17 over the summer, near multi-year lows, while its prior peak was around 40. “You could theoretically double Bitcoin versus gold,” Sigel said.
He also tied VanEck’s long-term upside case to gold. The firm uses half of gold’s market capitalization as the “north star” for Bitcoin, which Sigel said would put the price at about $500,000. He said that could happen this cycle or the next.
Sigel also added that investors should size the two assets differently, since Bitcoin is about three times as volatile as gold. VanEck itself holds about 2% of its assets in digital-asset strategies and about 13% in gold and gold miners, he added.
Speaking on a similar note, Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood said on Friday that the “turn is in” for Bitcoin against gold. Even though she shared the bullish view, she reads the relationship differently. Wood said Ark’s study found little to no link between the two assets since 2019 and that it has recently turned negative.
Quantum Risk Is No Reason To Sell Bitcoin
However, Sigel did not dismiss the risks. He called quantum computing a risk, noting that Bitcoin has no CEO who can order a code fix. But he said that he doesn’t think “it’s a reason to sell Bitcoin.”
Sigel was also calm about the bigger macro risks. He said the main bear case is that high Treasury yields could “break something” in the market. If that hits AI, “some of that capital can flow, actually counterintuitively, back into Bitcoin,” he said, because a lot of debt was set to be raised to fund the AI buildout.
A crisis in the finance sector would hit all markets, depending on its size, Sigel said, though he expects policymakers to respond by “money printing” or creating new money to bring up the economy. He added that Bitcoin is in a better position than in the last downturn because ETFs have resolved custody issues and most leverage has shifted to regulated venues.
Bitcoin’s price traded over $85,000, up over 0.6% over the past 24 hours. On Stocktwits, the retail sentiment around Bitcoin was in the ‘bearish’ zone, with chatter dipping to ‘low’ from ‘normal’ levels over the past day.
Read also: Bitcoin’s Weekly Chart Flips Bullish As 40-Week Trend Turns Higher — Analyst Says ‘Super Cycle’ Is Here
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