Jake Klein, CEO of Australian gold mining establishment Evolution Mining, has said that crypto price volatility will make gold a far more attractive proposition.
Speaking to CNBC on Thursday, Klein argued that Bitcoin (BTC) is still ways away from offering the longstanding security associated with gold from a hedge investment perspective, despite Bitcoin’s returns outsizing gold by several orders of magnitude in the last decade.
According to Klein, crypto is still a speculative play and the attendant volatility inherent in such markets will point investors back towards gold.
The unstable nature of cryptocurrency prices is an often-cited criticism of crypto as an asset class. Back in June, Francesca Fornasari of BNY Mellon subsidiary outfit Insight Investment argued that Bitcoin’s price volatility, among other factors, might make BTC unsuitable for institutional investors.
Data from Woobull Charts puts Bitcoin’s 60-day volatility at 11.69% following BTC’s unstable price action in June when the annualized 30-day volatility soared to a one-year high above 117%.
Gold has also seen a choppy price performance since the start of a year with swings as high as $200 between June and August.
Despite Klein’s statement about gold still being superior to Bitcoin, the miner stated that both assets could coexist while dismissing claims that BTC will eventually knock the precious metal off its haven asset perch.
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As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Bloomberg strategist Mike McGlone recently stated that BTC was replacing gold.
In terms of returns, Bitcoin trumps gold across all time frames since the former came into existence. Indeed, gold’s 10-year returns recently flipped negative while Bitcoin’s performance over the last decade sits at over 360,000%.
Taking the last year as a reference point also paints a similar picture. Gold is down 8% since August 2020, while Bitcoin has printed a 300% gain since Aug. 20, 2020.