What happened? Bitcoin is increasingly being seen by younger investors in emerging markets as a store of value that can rival gold, according to VanEck’s Matthew Sigel.
Sigel noted surveys showing younger consumers favor Bitcoin and pointed out that if Bitcoin captured a share of gold’s store-of-value market it could imply much higher prices per coin. Bitcoin also just hit a record above $126,000 amid big ETF inflows, shrinking exchange supply, and demand for safe-haven assets. VanEck’s wider research even models scenarios where Bitcoin settles a meaningful portion of global trade and reaches multi-hundred-thousand to multi-million dollar price levels by mid-century.
Who does this affect? The shift matters most to younger investors in emerging markets, but it also touches institutions, gold holders, and policymakers.
Younger retail buyers in fast-growing economies are showing a clear preference for digital assets over traditional stores like gold, which could change long-term demand patterns. Institutional players, ETF providers, exchanges, miners and Layer-2 developers all feel the effects as capital flows, infrastructure needs, and liquidity dynamics evolve. Central banks and large investors could also be impacted if reserve allocation or settlement habits shift toward crypto over decades.
Why does this matter? This trend can meaningfully reshape markets by boosting demand, tightening supply and shifting reserve and payment dynamics.
Growing retail and institutional demand plus ETF inflows and reduced exchange inventories put upward pressure on Bitcoin’s price and increase market concentration and volatility. If Layer-2 scalability and adoption progress, Bitcoin could become more useful for payments and settlement, which would further increase utility-driven demand and long-term valuation assumptions. That potential reallocation from gold and parts of the fiat reserve system to Bitcoin would have big implications for asset prices, capital flows and how global trade is settled over time.