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Fed Chairman Jerome Powell Compares Bitcoin to Gold
Powell compared bitcoin to gold, referring to them both as speculative stores of value.
By Daniel Kuhn
Updated Sep 13, 2021, 9:25 a.m. Published Jul 11, 2019, 10:30 p.m.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he can envision a return to an era where multiple currencies are in use in the United States.
During Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee on Facebook’s planned Libra cryptocurrency, he said: “The size of Facebook’s network means it could be, essentially, immediately systemically important.”
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Though the initiative raised “a lot of serious concerns,” including privacy, money laundering, consumer protection, and financial stability, he began to speak favorably about other cryptocurrencies.
“Almost no one uses bitcoin for payments, they use it more as an alternative to gold,” he said Thursday afternoon. “It's a speculative store of value.”
Powell has stated in the past that the United States should not return to the gold standard. Some took the statement as referring to a call to "drop gold, buy bitcoin."
How far we've come. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve just compared bitcoin to gold
— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) July 11, 2019
Folks, it's happeninghttps://t.co/onVmTj4hUk
Disclosure: Silbert is the head of CoinDesk owner DCG.
Image via Shutterstock.
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KuCoin captured a record share of centralised exchange volume in 2025, with more than $1.25tn traded as its volumes grew faster than the wider crypto market.
Was Sie wissen sollten:
- KuCoin recorded over $1.25 trillion in total trading volume in 2025, equivalent to an average of roughly $114 billion per month, marking its strongest year on record.
- This performance translated into an all-time high share of centralised exchange volume, as KuCoin’s activity expanded faster than aggregate CEX volumes, which slowed during periods of lower market volatility.
- Spot and derivatives volumes were evenly split, each exceeding $500 billion for the year, signalling broad-based usage rather than reliance on a single product line.
- Altcoins accounted for the majority of trading activity, reinforcing KuCoin’s role as a primary liquidity venue beyond BTC and ETH at a time when majors saw more muted turnover.
- Even as overall crypto volumes softened mid-year, KuCoin maintained elevated baseline activity, indicating structurally higher user engagement rather than short-lived volume spikes.
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Here's what bitcoin bulls are saying as price remains stuck during global rally
It's about a lot more than "zooming out." Supply overhangs and investor "muscle memory" regarding gold help explain bitcoin's poor absolute and relative performance.
What to know:
- Bitcoin has failed so far to act as an inflation hedge or safe-haven asset, lagging badly behind gold, which has surged amid high inflation, wars, and interest rate uncertainty.
- Crypto advocates argue that bitcoin’s weakness reflects a temporary supply overhang, investor “muscle memory” favoring familiar precious metals and its correlation with risk assets, rather than a collapse in long-term demand.
- Many bitcoin proponents still see BTC as a superior long-term store of value and “digital gold,” predicting that, once traditional hard assets are overbought, capital will rotate into bitcoin, allowing it to “catch up” to gold.
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