David Tait, chief executive of the World Gold Council, said he sees Bitcoin heading toward zero. The head of the global gold lobby described the view as "pure trader instinct" in an interview and provided neither a model nor a target date.

The World Gold Council is the industry body for the global gold sector and is based in London. Founded in 1987, it represents the interests of gold mining companies and promotes gold as an asset class among institutional investors. Tait has led the organization since early 2019. The interview with financial journalist David Lin took place in May 2026, but the clip only went viral on X three months later. Criticism from the crypto industry followed quickly.

Tait says Bitcoin has failed as a crisis hedge

Tait's argument is narrower than the headline suggests. In his view, Bitcoin should function as a counterweight to risk positions and act as a form of insurance against turmoil in equity markets. He said the cryptocurrency has not fulfilled that role. In times of stress, he argued, Bitcoin behaves like a high-beta risk asset rather than cushioning equities.

Coverage of the interview cited the war between the United States and Iran as the reference case. During that episode, gold rose while Bitcoin fell.

That position touches on a long-running debate in the market over whether Bitcoin behaves like digital gold or like a risk asset. The "digital gold" label rests in part on Bitcoin's fixed supply cap of 21 million coins, which supporters cite as a scarcity feature analogous to gold's limited mine supply. Trading history, however, has often pointed the other way: in 2022, Bitcoin fell steeply alongside technology stocks during the Federal Reserve's rate-hiking cycle, while gold held its value far better over the same period. In Tait's view, Bitcoin lacks the very property that makes gold useful in a portfolio. He did not offer a valuation model and gave no target date.

"I thought it should be an offset, something you could use to offset the risk of a risk-asset position. It hasn't really done that to that extent. It's just my personal opinion, pure trader instinct." - David Tait, CEO World Gold Council

Tait did not argue against Bitcoin altogether. In his view, anyone holding gold should also hold Bitcoin, and vice versa. He said both assets can balance each other in crisis periods.

He also drew a clear distinction between Bitcoin and stablecoins. For dollar-backed tokens, he sees practical institutional use cases in payments, settlement and collateral. That view tracks the direction of the market: the United States enacted a federal regulatory framework for payment stablecoins in July 2025, and dollar-backed tokens such as USDT and USDC are already widely used as trading and lending collateral in crypto markets. In that respect, he assigns stablecoins a role that he does not assign to Bitcoin. His skepticism is aimed at Bitcoin as a store of value, not at digital assets as a whole.

Crypto industry points to a conflict of interest

The criticism focused less on Tait's comments than on his position. The World Gold Council is funded by the gold mining industry, and its work is intended to help anchor gold in institutional portfolios. Bitcoin competes with gold for the same capital. For that reason, a zero forecast from a leading gold lobbyist was met with skepticism. The conflict of interest is especially visible because the association actively promotes demand for the precious metal.

Institutional capital flows suggest a different picture. BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF, IBIT, which launched in January 2024 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved spot Bitcoin funds, reached about USD 70 billion in assets under management in 341 days. No other ETF has reached that level faster. By comparison, State Street's gold ETF, GLD, which listed in November 2004 and for years ranked among the largest commodity funds in the world, took around 1,700 days, or roughly 4.6 years, to reach a comparable level. Bitcoin products therefore crossed the threshold about five times faster than the gold equivalent.

The GLD comparison is used as a measure of institutional adoption. AUM, or assets under management, refers to the total client money held in a fund. In this case, such products hold Bitcoin physically and track its price through an exchange-traded share structure, allowing large investors to gain exposure to the cryptocurrency without arranging custody and key management themselves.

World Gold Council is also working on tokenization

While Tait dismissed Bitcoin, the World Gold Council is building a blockchain application of its own. Under the name "Gold-as-a-Service," the association is developing a platform for the tokenization of physical gold. A white paper already exists, and the next step is a proof of concept planned for the end of 2026. The target audience is explicitly crypto-native users. The project would enter a market where tokenized gold products such as Paxos Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT) already exist, each backed by allocated physical bullion held in vaults.

The project is aimed at the same investor base whose preferred asset Tait described as zero. Such tokens digitally represent deposited gold holdings and can be transferred around the clock. The association wants to bring gold into the same infrastructure that helped make Bitcoin popular. Tait's distancing therefore applies to the asset, not to the technology behind it.

This year's gold rally provides the background. Market observers point to two main drivers: rising U.S. government debt, which has climbed to around USD 39 trillion, and steady gold purchases by Asian central banks. Those central banks have been buying continuously for about three years as they diversify reserves and hedge fragile currencies with the metal. The scale of that shift is documented by the council itself: its Gold Demand Trends reports have recorded global central bank purchases above 1,000 tonnes a year since 2022, well above the average of the preceding decade.

Earlier in 2026, the rally pushed gold above USD 5,000 per ounce. It now trades at around USD 4,400.