Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, told attendees at the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong that Bitcoin will surpass gold in market value, and predicted the crossover could arrive within the next bull run.
‘I think Bitcoin will, for sure, become more important than gold,’ Zhao said during a session billed as ‘The Bitcoin Century,’ when asked whether Bitcoin would outrank bullion as a sovereign reserve asset. ‘I think Bitcoin will overtake gold pretty soon. In the next bull run, it could happen.’
Zhao framed Bitcoin as ‘just a much better asset than gold,’ and noted that the market value gap between the two has already narrowed to roughly tenfold, with gold currently worth approximately ten times more than Bitcoin by total market capitalisation.
That figure is worth holding on to, because it sets the size of the claim. Closing a tenfold gap in one cycle means Bitcoin’s market value multiplying roughly ten times, which is the same order of magnitude as the price prediction he closed on.
Institutional inertia, not technology, is the barrier
Zhao argued the main obstacle keeping gold ahead is not Bitcoin’s technical shortcomings but the institutional infrastructure built around bullion. Large countries have established systems for valuing, storing, and auditing gold reserves, and dismantling or replicating that apparatus takes years. For sovereign holders to ‘shift into Bitcoin’ is a multi-year process, he said, but one he considers inevitable.
Governments and the self-serving reserve basket
Zhao told the audience he routinely advises governments to build crypto reserves and acknowledged his own formula is ‘pretty simple and it’s a little bit self-serving.’ His recommended method is to strip out stablecoins, take the five largest remaining cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation, and weight the basket accordingly. The result is roughly 50 percent Bitcoin, 10 to 20 percent Ethereum, and a slice allocated to BNB, the token of the exchange he founded.
AI agents, data centre tokens, and the $1 million target
Zhao also addressed the role of artificial intelligence in crypto markets. He expects AI agents to begin transacting in crypto starting with stablecoins, and said that once a system accepts stablecoins, adding Bitcoin becomes straightforward.
He disclosed that he has held discussions with several top-tier AI companies about potential token launches. The capital demands facing those firms are enormous: Zhao said a single gigawatt of compute capacity costs between 30 billion and 50 billion dollars, and some companies are targeting hundreds of gigawatts within a few years, implying capital requirements running into the trillions. One model under discussion involves a ‘data center token’ that would entitle holders to future rewards, compute access, subscriptions, or model usage rights.
On trading, Zhao predicted AI adoption will arrive in financial markets before consumer payments, because trading demands gathering large volumes of information and reacting to news very quickly. He estimated the efficiency gain from AI-assisted trading at roughly tenfold.
Zhao, who stepped down as Binance’s chief executive in 2023 after pleading guilty to a U.S. money laundering charge, closed with a price call: Bitcoin reaching one million dollars ‘would be a good thing, and it will happen,’ he said, adding he does not believe it requires 25 years. ‘It’s going to happen much quicker, but more than price, I think we need a lot more utility. I think we need Bitcoin payments to happen on a massive scale. I think we need Bitcoin to be a retirement pension fund reserve. It will get there.’
