Bitcoin has long been touted as digital gold, but it still hasn’t enjoyed the same widespread adoption that the precious metal has had. Gold is everywhere, from jewelry stores on the high street to films and other entertainment offerings.
Bitcoin has boomed over the last ten years, but it’s still nowhere near this level of fame. Perhaps the next thing that Bitcoin needs is for popular culture to get behind it, as this will help people develop trust in it and believe in it as a potential new analogue for gold.
Gold is Firmly Cemented in Mainstream Culture
Bitcoin has a long way to go before it can acquire the same status that gold has. The natural element has been in mainstream culture for thousands of years, with early civilizations regarding it as a store of wealth in the same way people do today. People in modern society have been conditioned to associate gold with riches and importance through countless cultural links, such as its use in wedding rings and trophies. For Bitcoin to achieve a similar status, we need to see more popular imagery associated with it, and right now that doesn’t quite exist.
Take the entertainment industry. Mainstream media has played a huge part in cementing gold’s reputation in the modern vernacular, with many classic Hollywood heist films involving gold robberies, for example. Nowadays, it can also be found throughout the gaming industry, and it has become a particularly common theme in the video slots market. There are countless gold games, including Gold Collector and Gold Cherry, and that ubiquity has to come from somewhere.
Essentially, gold has become an easy iconic shorthand for some sort of desirable item or MacGuffin, making it perfect for media like video games and movies where the audience has to visually understand very quickly what’s important to collect, or what a character’s motivation is. If Bitcoin could come to represent a similar sort of reward or value, it might achieve more staying power in wider culture.
Bitcoin is Now Getting Greater Attention
Even though Bitcoin doesn’t have thousands of years of history backing it up, it is already starting to get much greater attention in the mainstream and could soon become a more important store of wealth than gold. The fact that countries are now backing the cryptocurrency and putting it into their strategic reserves is huge, and highlights how they believe in its future potential for much higher valuations.
For Bitcoin to flip gold in terms of market cap, it would need to do at least another 10x from where it is now. However, that’s not completely out of the question given its history over the last decade. $1 million per BTC is something that many people predict will happen within another decade.
Cryptocurrency Could Build the Same Legacy as Gold
Gold made a name for itself as the primary store of wealth in the days before the world went digital. Now, it’s arguably outdated, and Bitcoin is poised to take its place. Just as gold forged its reputation over a long period of time, BTC could do the same as we move into the future.
In a world in which everyone lives online and AI is ubiquitous, there’s a need for more up-to-date ways to store and express wealth. BTC offers the answer to this, and it has the potential to keep rising in stature over the next hundred years. We may look back at this time when one BTC was worth just over $100,000 and marvel at how cheap it was.
Also read: How technology is transforming financial due diligence.
