Thomas Perfumo, Chief Economist at Kraken, offered deep insight into how Bitcoin is evolving—and why it doesn’t neatly fit into any one box.
Speaking to TheStreet Roundtable host Scott Melker, Perfumo pushed back on the idea that Bitcoin trades strictly like either gold or a tech stock.
“Bitcoin actually just noted a new all-time high when denominated by the Nasdaq,” Melker pointed out, highlighting the asset’s unpredictable identity in the current macro landscape.
Perfumo agreed that Bitcoin’s behavior is unique, shaped by its stage of maturity in the adoption cycle. “When you see price signals in gold, gold price rising, you might have changes in the supply-demand fundamentals,” he said. “With Bitcoin, nothing has changed. The design itself is still the same. It’s consistent every single day, year in and year out.”
That consistency, he explained, is why Bitcoin holds the foundation of a safe-haven asset. “It’s predictable,” he said. “You can plan everything around it.” But the volatility, he added, stems from its place in the adoption curve.
“We’re talking something closer to 10 to 15% of the population [owning Bitcoin],” Perfumo noted. “Once you start to stretch into that beyond 15% of the global population, you start to accelerate into that early majority… That’s where I think you have this kind of risk-on behavior.”
As adoption grows, so does distribution and accessibility, whether through banks or brokerages. “I kind of think that longer term, all the foundations and principles suggest that Bitcoin is going to behave like that kind of digital gold safe haven asset,” he added. “But as we’re going through that growth spurt… it does also behave like a risk-on asset.”
Melker summed it up. “So effectively, we expect that as it matures, it will become less volatile and trade more like a gold or safe haven.”
He also noted that Bitcoin’s volatility is already dropping. “Realized vol is something like 50%. Even August of last year… it was more in the 30s… which is actually relatively very low for Bitcoin.”
With 95% of Bitcoin already mined and annual supply growth at just 0.8%, Perfumo believes boom-bust cycles will continue until adoption broadens.
Bitcoin (BTC) is currently trading at $93,957.46, marking a 1.4% decline in the past 24 hours, per Kraken’s price feeds.
