Crypto CEO Says Bitcoin Was Never Meant To Be ‘Digital Gold’ – So What Is It?

A terse but provocative message by crypto CEO Jacob King has challenged the prevailing narrative around Bitcoin at a time when the asset’s price has reversed much of its 2025 gains. 

King contends that Bitcoin was never intended to function as a store of value or inflation hedge, two big labels widely used to describe Bitcoin in the past few years.

Whitepaper Never Described Bitcoin As Digital Gold

Bitcoin’s price decline in recent weeks has revived long-standing questions about what the cryptocurrency was meant to represent. Much of the price surge earlier in the year has now been erased, and sentiment across the market has shifted into a defensive posture. In light of this, Jacob King released a pointed critique challenging the main arguments that investors have attached to Bitcoin over the past decade.

King grounds his argument in the language of the Bitcoin whitepaper, which describes a peer-to-peer electronic cash system designed to facilitate direct online payments without intermediaries. He stresses that the whitepaper never discussed Bitcoin as a store of value, an inflation hedge, a geopolitical refuge, or any of the traits that dominate modern discourse.

In King’s view, high fees, limited throughput, and declining real-world use pushed supporters to adopt new perspectives that kept enthusiasm alive, even if those narratives had no connection to what Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s creator, outlined in 2008. 

Satoshi explicitly described Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer system for online payments. The idea of Bitcoin as a form of digital gold was manufactured by maximalists to attract fresh waves of retail buyers.

Bitcoin’s Recent Price Crash Supports King’s Criticism

King’s comments land at a moment when Bitcoin’s price action is playing out anything but stability. The leading cryptocurrency has dropped massively from its 2025 highs, reversing most of the year’s gains and sending shockwaves through the broader market. 

The decline led to liquidations, weakened sentiment across major altcoins, and raised new doubts about Bitcoin’s defensive qualities during periods of stress. 

King’s view on Bitcoin clashes directly with the views of some of the most influential voices in global finance. Michael Saylor has repeatedly described Bitcoin as the superior successor to gold, calling it “digital property.” 

Larry Fink of BlackRock took the idea mainstream when he said Bitcoin had become a hedge to overcome and address local fears, a phrase that suggested the asset was maturing into a global store of value.

Tom Lee, Head of Research at Fundstrat Global, has also embraced this viewpoint, stating that Bitcoin’s valuation could climb to the $200,000 to $250,000 range if it manages to capture 25%  of gold’s market share. 

Earlier this year, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell echoed similar sentiment, noting that Bitcoin now acts as a legitimate competitor to gold.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at $84,130.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView