Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller mentioned Bitcoin “was going to finish up being one thing like digital gold,” describing the asset as a non-yielding retailer of worth whose worth is sustained by collective perception quite than money flows. The remarks got here on October 21, 2025, throughout a “Crypto in America” livestream, and so they monitor with Waller’s longer-running view that bitcoin capabilities extra like a belief-driven commodity than a funds instrument.
Bitcoin Is ‘Like Digital Gold’
“Look, I’ve all the time argued that Bitcoin was going to finish up being one thing like digital gold. It’s a retailer of worth. It guarantees no return. It’s simply, you purchase it and maintain it for some appreciation. That’s precisely what you do. It’s commodities like gold. That’s it. There’s nothing improper with it. It has a optimistic worth. It doesn’t have any elementary worth. I don’t assume gold has actually any elementary worth both,” Waller mentioned, earlier than including that property like gold and BTC can maintain costs via “perception equilibrium”—the expectation that another person pays extra later.
The “digital gold” framing is just not new for Waller. In prior appearances, he has argued that the majority crypto property have little intrinsic value however that bitcoin sits aside as a wealth-preservation automobile, akin to collectibles or valuable metals that persist as a result of markets settle for them as shops of worth. In a single such dialogue, he put it plainly: “Bitcoin to me is principally digital gold… It doesn’t have any elementary intrinsic worth, however that’s okay.”
JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Fed Governor Waller says Bitcoin is “like digital gold.” pic.twitter.com/IOY1892pKs
— Bitcoin Archive (@BTC_Archive) October 21, 2025
Waller’s newest feedback land because the Fed itself convenes coverage and expertise circles round digital property and funds innovation. Protection of his October 21 remarks—delivered as a part of the central financial institution’s opening to a payments-innovation agenda—emphasised each his characterization of BTC and his suggestion that the Fed ought to discover narrower entry fashions to its rails for innovators, an implicit nod to crypto-native corporations.
The “digital gold” analogy has additionally been adopted—generally fairly explicitly—by Waller’s boss. In December 2024, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell mentioned on the New York Instances DealBook Summit that folks use bitcoin “as a speculative asset,” calling it “like gold—it’s simply digital and digital,” and stressing that BTC competes with gold, not the US greenback. Powell’s phrasing has since been extensively cited because the clearest articulation from a sitting Fed Chair that BTC’s closest analogue is gold.
Powell’s 2024 feedback additionally echoed a fair earlier stance: in testimony and public remarks courting again years, he has repeatedly described bitcoin as a speculative retailer of worth “like gold,” a view that markets have tended to interpret as de-emphasizing bitcoin’s near-term function in funds whereas acknowledging its entrenchment as a bearer asset in portfolios.
Collectively, the Waller and Powell statements additional entrench a delineation that has turn out to be frequent amongst financial officers: BTC as a non-yielding, belief-anchored retailer of worth, distinct from each financial institution cash and stablecoins designed for transactional use. In the meantime, Fed governor Barr lately warned that the GENIUS Act might protect Bitcoin from the central financial institution’s oversight.
At press time, BTC traded at $107,985.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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