Gold, not Bitcoin, absorbed the market’s flight to safety. That outcome has reopened debate over Bitcoin’s long-promoted role as digital gold.
Ran Neuner said the key issue was not simply that Bitcoin fell in price. His focus was Bitcoin’s behavior during a clear risk-off stretch marked by macro volatility, rising tariffs, and currency stress. In his view, Bitcoin has already moved far from the old peer-to-peer cash narrative and into a digital gold framing, with years of market effort spent pushing ETFs and broader institutional access. That campaign succeeded. Institutions can now trade Bitcoin without the access barriers that once defined the asset, yet capital still moved into gold when fiscal instability hit.
Open institutional access did not translate into safe-haven demand
For Neuner, that response matters because Bitcoin no longer sits outside the financial system. If access is no longer the constraint, then the market’s preference during stress becomes a direct test of the store-of-value claim. He also said retail participation remains near multi-year lows and that many early supporters have largely exited. The point is blunt: once Bitcoin entered the mainstream system, it also became easier to measure whether its narrative could hold under pressure.
His criticism was aimed at Bitcoin specifically, not the crypto sector as a whole. Neuner drew a line between Bitcoin and the wider crypto infrastructure stack, arguing that the current doubt centers on the flagship asset rather than the entire industry.
Willy Woo says a 12-year valuation relationship with gold has broken
Willy Woo approached the issue from the valuation side. He said Bitcoin’s 12-year valuation trend against gold has broken. By his reading, Bitcoin should be trading at a much higher level relative to gold, but markets have moved the other way.
Woo linked part of that divergence to growing awareness of quantum computing risk. Investors, he said, are now factoring in the possibility that quantum advances could threaten Bitcoin’s cryptography. He still expects quantum-resistant upgrades in the future, but he argued that another supply-related issue remains in play at the same time.
About 4 million lost coins remain a potential supply overhang
Woo highlighted roughly 4 million BTC that were considered lost but could theoretically return to circulation. He estimated a 75% chance those coins would not be frozen through a hard fork. In his framing, that amount of supply is roughly equal to eight years of corporate and ETF accumulation.
Since 2020, companies and spot ETFs have accumulated about 2.8 million BTC, according to Woo. Even so, he argued that markets are already pricing the risk of lost coins coming back into circulation. He said that repricing could continue until the so-called Q-Day risk fades, a process he suggested may take 5 to 15 years.
Debate over Bitcoin does not erase the case for crypto rails
Neuner also separated Bitcoin from the settlement infrastructure that may support future digital activity. He said AI agents will need instant, programmable settlement rails rather than systems built on banks or credit cards. In that view, the challenge is not whether crypto networks have utility. The immediate question is whether Bitcoin can still convincingly hold the digital gold position after a period in which gold captured the safe-haven bid.