Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller said Bitcoin “was going to end up being something like electronic gold,” describing the asset as a non-yielding store of value whose price is sustained by collective belief rather than cash flows. The remarks came on October 21, 2025, during a “Crypto in America” livestream, and they track with Waller’s longer-running view that bitcoin functions more like a belief-driven commodity than a payments instrument.
“Look, I have always argued that Bitcoin was going to end up being something like electronic gold. It’s a store of value. It promises no return. It’s just, you buy it and hold it for some appreciation. That’s exactly what you do. It’s commodities like gold. That’s it. There’s nothing wrong with it. It has a positive price. It doesn’t have any fundamental value. I don’t think gold has really any fundamental value either,” Waller said, before adding that assets like gold and BTC can sustain prices through “belief equilibrium”—the expectation that someone else will pay more later.
The “electronic gold” framing is not new for Waller. In prior appearances, he has argued that most crypto assets have little intrinsic worth but that bitcoin sits apart as a wealth-preservation vehicle, akin to collectibles or precious metals that persist because markets accept them as stores of value. In one such discussion, he put it plainly: “Bitcoin to me is basically electronic gold… It doesn’t have any fundamental intrinsic value, but that’s okay.”
Powell’s 2024 comments also echoed an even earlier stance: in testimony and public remarks dating back years, he has repeatedly described bitcoin as a speculative store of value “like gold,” a view that markets have tended to interpret as de-emphasizing bitcoin’s near-term role in payments while acknowledging its entrenchment as a bearer asset in portfolios.
At press time, BTC traded at $107,985.
