How much gold is a bitcoin worth?

Using price data from TradingView, this graphic compares the two assets by showing how much gold is equivalent to one bitcoin, while visualizing bitcoin’s market value and 2021 gold production in the form of gold cubes.

What is the weight of a bitcoin in gold?

With a single bitcoin worth around $22,600 at the time of the visualization, this equates to a small cube of gold just over 20cm³with each side measuring around 2.7 centimeters, or just over one inch.

This tiny gold cube that fits in the palm of your hand is not only worth $22,600, but also weighs an impressive 12.6 troy ounces (just under 0.8 lbs or about 357 grams) thanks to gold’s extremely high density of 19.32 g/cm³.

When you convert the value of bitcoin’s entire $432.7 billion market cap into physical gold, the gold cube would be 7.3 m (23.9 ft), taller than four people stacked on top of each other. To put this into perspective, we also visualized the amount of gold mined in 2021, which was worth around $204.9 billion, weighing 3,560.7 tonnes.

Comparison of bitcoin’s digital gold with physical gold

In its short 13-year lifespan, bitcoin has grown tremendously to reach nearly half a trillion in market capitalization currently, but compared to gold, it’s still tiny.

2021’s gold production alone was worth nearly half of bitcoin’s entire market cap, and with gold’s market cap estimated at around $11.7 trillion, that’s more than 20 times larger than that of cryptocurrency.

While this may initially seem like a disadvantage for bitcoin, its small market capitalization has partly enabled stratospheric price increases during bull runs.

Due to bitcoin’s smaller market capitalization, money flowing into bitcoin results in a greater percentage increase than if the same amount of money flowed into gold, giving the cryptocurrency more potential upside, but also much more volatility as money moves in and out.

A tale of two value stores

While gold has long been a safe haven or store of value for investors, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies grabbed all the attention in 2021 as the price of the orange coin surged 59% to hit an all-time high of $69,000. However, since the start of 2022, bitcoin’s price has fallen by 49%, and is more than 65% from its record high last year.

As a result of all this volatility, bitcoin is now below any price it traded in 2021, meaning anyone who bought bitcoin in 2021 and held on is now down on their investment.

Meanwhile, gold fell 4% in 2021, and is down another 2% in 2022, so while gold buyers in 2021 are also down on their investment, they’ve had a much smoother ride with less losses along the way.

Regardless of what lies ahead for these two unique assets, in terms of market capitalization, returns and volatility, the digital gold that is bitcoin has a long way to go before it catches up with the real thing.

(This article first appeared in Visual Capitalist Elements)