CZ says bitcoin could overtake gold in the next bull run

Binance co-founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao told attendees at the Bitcoin Asia 2026 conference in Hong Kong that bitcoin could overtake gold in market value during the next bull cycle, The Block reported.

Gold's market capitalization still runs about 10 times larger than bitcoin's, Zhao said, and closing that gap is less about price than about a broader shift in how investors treat reserve assets. Sovereign reserve allocations will eventually tilt toward digital assets, he argued, with bitcoin making up over 50% of strategic crypto holdings alongside assets like Ethereum and BNB. That shift won't happen overnight: major economies have spent decades building valuation, reserve, and trading systems around gold, infrastructure that doesn't get replaced in a single cycle.

• Gold's market cap vs. bitcoin's: roughly 10x larger
• Bitcoin's gain last week: over 25%
• Gold's level: above $4,600
• Bitcoin's price Thursday: around $79,700-$80,313, up 1.5-2% over 24 hours

Zhao's comments land after a sharp rebound in both assets: bitcoin gained more than 25% last week while gold climbed above $4,600 in the same stretch. That timing matters given how volatile gold has looked lately. Intokened reported that gold and silver lost $14.5 trillion in value over six months, six times the size of the entire crypto market, a reminder that the metal Zhao is comparing bitcoin against has had a rough run of its own.

Zhao also addressed where AI and crypto intersect, predicting the two will converge through stablecoins first. "I think it will probably start with stablecoins," he said. "Once you can accept stablecoins, adding bitcoin will be very easy." He expects AI-assisted trading to mature before AI-driven payments, since trading rewards fast information-gathering and rapid execution while most consumers can already pay with a card. "You need to gather massive amounts of information very quickly, react rapidly to news, and analyze charts," he said. "No matter how you trade, AI can likely increase efficiency tenfold." Zhao has made a habit of weighing in on where the industry is headed: Intokened covered his recent take that exchanges are statistically safer than self-custody.

None of Zhao's remarks amount to a timeline. What he's describing is a slow reallocation, one that depends on gold's institutional plumbing losing ground to bitcoin's rather than any single price milestone, a process measured in years of policy and infrastructure decisions, not weeks of price action.

Nothing here should be taken as financial advice — just information to consider.