Bitcoin will be ‘more scarce than gold’

As Bitcoin (BTC) surpassed the critical $43,000 level and even briefly crossed the $44,000 mark several times in the last 24 hours, CNBC’s Fast Money trader and cryptocurrency investor Brian Kelly has shared his thoughts on the future of the flagship decentralized finance (DeFi) asset.

Indeed, Kelly said that, after the upcoming Bitcoin halving in spring 2024, the supply of the maiden crypto asset would become more limited, making it the first asset in history to become scarcer than gold, as he explained in an episode of Fast Money streamed on December 4.

According to Kelly, historical trends show that Bitcoin’s best performance ensues 12 to 16 months after the halving. However, he said that this time might be different as the price of Bitcoin is higher, and there is not a lot of it coming out per day – only about 900 BTC. On the other hand:

“But, what it does do is make Bitcoin more scarce than gold. So, for the first time in history, you have an asset that is more scarce than gold – let’s call it the stock-to-flow ratio. So, the amount of Bitcoin mined every year divided by the amount outstanding – same with gold. And now there’ll be less Bitcoin than gold mined on a relative basis.”

With this in mind, the expert crypto trader remains bullish on the largest asset by market capitalization in the crypto industry and believes altcoins would follow its breakout, as has already happened with Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), while others could do the same by January or so.

Bitcoin price analysis

Meanwhile, Bitcoin was at press time changing hands at the price of $43,844, recording an increase of 5.35% in the last 24 hours, as well as gaining 14.83% across the previous seven days, and making a more significant advance of 25.58% on its monthly chart, as per data on December 6.

All things considered, Bitcoin’s role as digital gold is becoming increasingly more pronounced, and the halving mechanism ingrained into its code aims to reduce the award for mining it and make it more scarce, thus potentially growing demand and, with it, its price.

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