Saifedean Ammous argues that Bitcoin already functions as money when held as a store of value; expects it will become larger and less volatile than gold as it matures.
Saifedean Ammous, the author of the 2018 academic book “The Bitcoin Standard,” said that Bitcoin already functions as a medium of exchange and that volatility’s effect on that is likely to diminish.
Bitcoin (BTC) can serve as a medium of exchange as it becomes less volatile than gold while surpassing the market capitalization of the largest precious metal, wrote Ammous in a Tuesday X post.
“Holding Bitcoin is using Bitcoin as money, and its lack of widespread use as a method of payment is no evidence against its monetization unfolding,” added Ammous.
The remarks come in response to a passage in Professor Lawrence H. White’s book, “Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin?,” which argued that Bitcoin’s fixed supply makes it too volatile to serve as a medium of exchange.
“With no supply response to demand swings, BTC’s price is too volatile for people who want a reliable medium of exchange,” wrote White in a Monday X post, referencing chapter six of his book. He added that the lack of supply response was the reason stablecoins have “eaten BTC’s lunch transaction volume.”
Other industry watchers have also predicted that Bitcoin would eventually surpass gold. In May 2025, Bitwise’s head of European research, André Dragosch, told Cointelegraph that their in-house prediction forecasts a $1 million Bitcoin price by 2029, which would make Bitcoin match gold’s market capitalization.
However, Bitcoin’s current $1.6 trillion market capitalization would need to grow by at least 18-fold to surpass Gold’s near $29 trillion market cap to become the leading global asset.
In April 2025, Blockstream CEO Adam Back predicted Bitcoin will start rivaling gold’s use cases as a monetary hedge, due to global financial instability and rising fiat inflation.
Related: Ledger implant tests Bitcoin ETFs as safer custodial solutions than hardware wallets
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