Popular Bitcoin enthusiast and crypto investor, Barry Silbert, during an interview with Inside the Icehouse earlier Thursday, has expressed his opinions about world gold reserves and how Bitcoin would come to replace fiat and many other popular assets including Gold in years to come.

Barry, The Crypto King

Barry Silbert, known by some as “the crypto king” is the Founder and CEO of Grayscale Investments LLC, the parent company of Grayscale bitcoin trust.

Barry also founded and is the CEO of Digital Currency Group, a global enterprise building, supporting and investing in over 140 companies across the globe including Coinbase and Ripple.

New York Fed, World’s Gold Largest Depository

Speaking on the world’s gold reserve as a store of national value for countries and how these countries might need the bitcoin alternative in the future, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York was made a major point of reference.

For the records, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is the largest depository of monetary gold. Sitting on around 497,000 gold bars with a total weight of 6190 tons buried 50ft below sea level, the New York Fed acts as gold custodian for account holders like the U.S. and the governments of other countries.

Gold Slowly Declining In Availability

According to the report, the history of this enormous gold city dates back to World War II when most countries sought a safe place to store their gold. As of 1937, the mass of gold present at this location was more than 12,000 tons, an amount twice as much as the present reserve. As this world gold reserve continue to decline slowly, more declination is expected to come in years. This then begged the question of what would replace this reserve when all the gold storage is out!

XAU/USD Performance

Recently, gold caught a bullish trend in the stock exchanges and this caused quite a roar as to which was better when compared to bitcoin. Several arguments were put forward along the lines of availability, volatility, acceptability and monetary value. While some bitcoin pessimists maintained that bitcoin was too volatile as a medium of exchange and therefore not a typical currency, bitcoin backers countered by arguing the security, ease of movements and returns on investments side of the story. This was on for some time.

Bitcoin’s  Adventure

Bitcoin too has been bullish for a while after its bearish season of 2018. Although not much happened as to touching its all-time high, it touched a significant $13k USD price in June, a point many thought bitcoin would never rise to again!

Bitcoin Is Readily Available With Fixed Total Supply

However, Barry’s point of view remains understandable and quite straightforward. Bitcoin is definite in supply, easy to transact, readily available and secure(as long as a user stores private keys securely). This relative properties of bitcoin to gold would account for much availability of bitcoin against gold in coming years. Also, as against gold, the total supply of the world bitcoin is certain and increasing value is highly speculated. According to Barry, this would make for a good asset useful as a store of national value in the long run.

Bitcoin Taking Over

Barry, in his opinion on bitcoin taking over fiat and even gold, said there would be no more fiat in years to come and few countries have already recognized the truth. Countries like Venezuela and China are looking into developing national cryptocurrencies in preparation for the crypto revolution. Others will follow the trend too, according to Barry.

It is clear that cryptocurrencies are here to stay as an asset class… It is clear that Money is going digital. It is clear that, in the future, physical cash is gonna go away… You know, from history over 500 years, the average life of fiat currencies is 27 years…

About Author

Dare Shonubi

Staff writer at Coingape. Certified cryptocurrency expert and Blockchain journalist covering crypto market analysis and general Blockchain adoption and development. You can follow me on Twitter at @ShonubiDare or reach out to me at dare[at]coingape.com