Is Bitcoin Still "Digital Gold"?

A store of value, which is to say, an asset that investors can count on to have at least roughly as much purchasing power in the future as it holds today, tends to be something that earns the title the hard way. It has to remain valuable even when the world gets weird and bad, and it has to keep its footing when other assets are going haywire. Hence why gold is the canonical store of value; it has an incredibly long history of having a relatively consistent amount of purchasing power per ounce.

Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) has been auditioning during the last few years for the digital gold role, and there are indeed some similarities between it and the precious metal. But its behavior in 2025 and early 2026 has made that label substantially less defensible for anyone who needs a safe asset now, and it's unclear if it will be able to truly claim the status of being a store of value comparable to gold. Here's what's going on and what you need to know.

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What people mean by "digital gold"

When investors compare Bitcoin to gold, they usually mean three things.

As stated previously, the coin should retain purchasing power over time, and it should also mostly hold up during periods of economic and market stress. Furthermore, if it's actually digital gold, then buying it should diversify a portfolio by not moving in lockstep with U.S. stocks, which, within this frame of understanding, would be a riskier class of asset.

But there's more than one big fly in the ointment with this narrative. During the past 12 months, gold's price increased by 84%, and Bitcoin's price declined by 14%; for reference, the broader stock market increased by 16% in the same period. If Bitcoin is truly digital gold, it should have risen, not declined. And it appeared to be somewhat correlated to the stock market to the downside, but frequently slightly less so to the upside.

So if you're evaluating Bitcoin as an alternative investment to gold in hopes of securing a portion of a store of value that can't be inflated like a fiat currency can, understand that it certainly isn't performing anything like the shiny metal at the moment. Does that mean it can't ever be a true store of value?

What the future might bring, and what to do

None of this proves Bitcoin cannot acquire the characteristics of gold in the decades to come, and it's still arguably a store of value today -- just not as good of one as actual gold. Time is an ingredient here, and Bitcoin simply has less of a history than gold.

Obviously, Bitcoin has a different origin story than gold.

It was designed to be both increasingly scarce over time, and censorship-resistant, both of which support its store-of-value narrative in the long run. But scarcity does not guarantee that an asset will prove safe, gaining value during times of crisis, and generally preserving value over decades. If the marginal buyer treats Bitcoin as a high-volatility risk asset, which is something that most of the evidence supports, it will doubtlessly have trouble when risk appetite disappears, typically during market turbulence.

So what should you do? It clearly won't do to just load up on Bitcoin and hope for the best when what you're really looking for is a safer investment.

Therefore, it makes the most sense to treat Bitcoin based on how it behaves today. Do not over-allocate to Bitcoin on the assumption that it will protect you the way gold historically has. It's a long-duration, high-volatility asset whose returns can depend heavily on liquidity, sentiment, and central bank interest rate policy regimes. If you can tolerate those downsides and hold it for long enough, it's still a great asset to buy and hold.

Finally, keep in mind that it's still very possible that the coin will perform differently in the future with regard to other stores of value and its correlation with the stock market. The first 20 years that people were using gold as a store of value probably also saw a plethora of different interpretations about the metal's value before perceptions about its proper price converged, and Bitcoin might be no different in the long term.

Alex Carchidi has positions in Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.