Bitcoin (BTC) has much further to go to sucking out even 10% of gold’s market cap than old data claims, a popular indicator reveals.

Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics resource CryptoQuant, highlighted numbers of Bitcoin’s realized limit on Jan. 12, saying the cryptocurrency had taken much less of gold’s market cap than previously claimed.

Realized cap cools Bitcoin numbers game

As Bitcoin grew in price towards the end of 2020, hitting record highs of $ 42,000 last week, a story emerged that investors exchange gold to BTC, and that Bitcoin had thus taken about 7% of the $ 10 trillion precious metal market cap.

Using the realized cap, which calculates market capitalization in a different, more accurate way, the real “theft” of gold is actually 2%, says Ki.

Unlike market capitalization, the metric measures the price at which each bitcoin was last moved, and excludes coins on centralized custody exchanges, excluding speculative movements. The total is also held lower by the long-lost BTC, which will have last moved at likely much lower prices than the current one.

“People said $ BTC took up 7% of the gold market cap. No, that’s not it. There are unclaimed, unreachable and lost Bitcoins. Based on the realized limit, it is only 2%, ”he tweeted next to a realized cap chart.

“If digital gold replaces 10% of the $ XAU market cap, the price of $ BTC would be $ 154,000.”

Bitcoin’s realized limit was $ 227 billion on Wednesday, while its standard market cap was $ 645 billion.

BTC performance trumps gold, fair and square

Despite its arguably slower progress, Bitcoin is still doing extremely well against gold, which failed to make up for its losses in BTC terms, even as BTC / USD fell close to $ 30,000 on Monday.

Bitcoin bought 18.6 ounces of the precious metal at the time of publication, according to the publication data from Buy Bitcoin Worldwide.

Gold makes strong gains in Bitcoin collapse. pic.twitter.com/sqNiWBDJIF

– O₿iWan (@ObiWanKenoBit) January 12, 2021

Bitcoin’s correlation with gold tended to zero this week, well below October.

Previously, commenters noted that Bitcoin does already transferred the total market capitalization of $ 10 trillion of gold in its 12-year history.