Grayscale Investments launched a campaign recently that lobbies for investors to dump gold in favor of cryptocurrencies. The campaign, #DropGold, has the World Gold Council (WGC) in a frenzy and the group has now responded in an effort to try and prevent any major switches from the precious metal to the precious currency.
The WGC most likely feels threatened by the solid arguments offered by Grayscale. For example, the DropGold website asserts, “Ever tried to pull your weight in gold? We’re living in a digital world, a new financial era where bitcoin is displacing gold. While a gold bar weighs around 25.7 pounds, bitcoin is weightless and can be bought, sold, and transferred as easily as a text message.”
In an effort to support Gold as the real king, WGC Manager of Investment Research Adam Perlaky penned a blog post entitled, “Cryptocurrencies are no replacement for gold.” He starts off by saying, “Although cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology look promising as a whole, they clearly do not represent a substitute for gold either in theory or in practice” and provides several reasons to support his position. He points out that gold is less volatile, has a liquid market, is traded in according with established regulations and is a “safe-haven investment.”
What he leaves out is that gold’s value can be—and has been—manipulated time and time again. According to a report by NASDAQ from 2018, “There are several variations to the theory, but the general belief is that precious metals like gold and silver are under the thumb of central banks and other large banks, which use high frequency trading (HFT) as well as derivatives (aka naked shorts) to tamp down prices. There are also worries about discrepancies between paper gold and physical bullion in systems such as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) Gold Price.”
That same “central bank” is the one that manipulates fiat prices, as well. This was part of the reason Bitcoin was first conceptualized, allowing users to regain control over their money, without relying on central banks or governments that can change values virtually on a whim.
At least Perlaky was nice enough to give credit to blockchains and crypto in his post. He concluded that the MGC continues “to acknowledge the innovation taking place in the cryptocurrency and blockchain spaces and believe there will be a role for this technology in the future,” but that they feel that “cryptocurrencies are not a replacement for gold and gold should remain a component in all investment portfolios.”
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