CEO of Bitwise warns about the "next barrier for Bitcoin in the coming quarters"

Bitcoin has risen from 40,000 dollars to 75,000 dollars as the spot ETF was approved by the United States and then rose above 100,000 dollars in the context of regulatory easing under Trump's pro-cryptocurrency administration.

But according to Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley, this asset may still face challenges in the future.

He emphasized the dual obstacles such as competition from 10x alternative opportunities and the story of "fading" digital gold among institutional investors.

"These two issues are not the most urgent at present, but they will reveal themselves as the next obstacles in the coming quarters."

Capital flow into Bitcoin ETF surpasses gold

Meanwhile, BTC has seen relatively strong demand from institutional investors in Q2 compared to gold. According to the ETF cash flow into the two risk-hedging assets, in Q2, gold ETF demand dropped by 40% from $30 billion to $15 billion.

In contrast, Bitcoin ETF recovered from an outflow of 3.3 billion dollars to nearly 10 billion dollars in inflows as of the time of writing.

Source: Bold ReportHorsley added that BTC will not compete with gold, as both attract the attention of investors in the future because they are "non-political store of value (SoV)." But bonds will be the new competitor of BTC.

"Instead, I think that Bitcoin's competition will ultimately be U.S. Treasury bonds and bonds from other governments (, for example: UK government bonds ): the political SOVs."

However, regarding the profits of investors, BTC has had a favorable start since April and has outperformed gold by 34%.

However, gold has outperformed BTC by 10% since mid-May, according to the BTC/gold ratio, an indicator that tracks the relative price performance of BTC against gold.

BTC/Gold ratio | Source: Trading ViewIn just this week, this ratio has risen by 1.5%, indicating that BTC is holding its value relatively better than gold during the times of tension in the Middle East.

In fact, based on the year ( YoY ), BTC rose 58%, providing investors with returns higher than 11% of the S&P 500 index or 46% of gold. If this rate continues to rise to 40, then BTC will provide better returns than gold.

Minh Anh