Economist Saifedean Ammous has argued that Bitcoin (BTC) already functions as money and that its one-year realized volatility has narrowed to 1.52 times that of gold. He made the case in an essay published on X on Tuesday, October 13.

The essay is a direct reply to Lawrence H. White, a professor at George Mason University, who had posted his objection.

The Volatility Comparison

Ammous's central data point concerns realized volatility, a backward-looking measure of how widely an asset's price has swung over a given period. By his figure, Bitcoin's one-year realized volatility now stands at 1.52 times gold's, meaning BTC's price swings over the trailing year were 52% higher than the precious metal's.

The gold benchmark carries weight in this argument because standard monetary theory describes money as serving three functions: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value, and price swings speak directly to how reliably an asset performs that last role. Within the debate over Bitcoin's monetary status, volatility has been among the most frequently cited objections, and gold has long served as the reference asset in such comparisons.

Historically, Bitcoin's volatility has run at a substantially larger multiple of gold's, and Ammous cited the narrowed gap in support of his argument that Bitcoin already performs the functions of money.

Background

Ammous, an economist and author of The Bitcoin Standard, has long argued that Bitcoin satisfies the properties of sound money. White is a George Mason University economics professor known for research on monetary theory and free banking. Their exchange adds to a long-running scholarly debate over whether Bitcoin should be counted as money, one in which comparisons against established stores of value have served as a recurring yardstick.

COINOTAG published this report on October 15. This content was first published on COINOTAG: https://en.coinotag.com/saifedean-ammous-bitcoin-btc-volatility-1-52x-gold-white-rebuttal