Bitcoin Will 'Massively' Beat Gold in 10 Years, Says Pantera CEO

Did you know that $100 billion alternative investment firms hold exactly 0% in crypto? That's the statistic that keeps Pantera Capital CEO Dan Morehead bullish on bitcoin's long-term prospects.

The 10-Year Showdown: Bitcoin vs Gold

Speaking at Tuesday's Ondo Summit in New York, Morehead made a bold prediction: "In 10 years from now, bitcoin will massively outperform gold. That's very obvious." His reasoning cuts through market noise with stark simplicity.

"Paper money is being debased at 3% every year, and that's called stable money," Morehead explained. "Over your lifetime, that's 90%." His conclusion? It's "totally rational" to invest in fixed-supply assets like gold or bitcoin.

Interestingly, both assets have been playing musical chairs with investor attention. While gold surged ahead recently, total ETF inflows into both assets have been roughly equal over recent years, suggesting a natural rotation between the two stores of value.

Death of the Four-Year Cycle

Fundstrat'sTom Lee challenged conventional crypto wisdom, arguing that the market no longer follows simple four-year patterns. His evidence? Ethereum's rising activity and the massive deleveraging event during October 2025's crypto crash.

"That was a bigger wipeout than November 2022," Lee noted, suggesting the market's evolution beyond traditional cycle theory. The implication is profound: crypto markets are maturing into something more complex and less predictable than early adopters assumed.

The Institutional Void

Morehead's strongest bullish argument centers on institutional absence. "All these $100 billion alt firms have zero bitcoin or crypto, and that's why I'm still so bullish," he said. "You can't have a bubble when the median holding for institutional investors... is literally 0.0."

The barriers that once kept institutions away are systematically disappearing. Improved custodial options and regulatory clarity have crossed off most items from the "reasons to say no" list. What remains is a 12-year track record of 80% annual returns with low correlation to traditional assets—a rare combination of high growth and portfolio diversification.

The Invisible Revolution

Lee painted a picture of crypto infrastructure quietly embedding itself into everyday finance. "I think crypto starts to become invisibly more part of everyone's lives," he said, pointing to stablecoins, tokenized assets, and crypto-powered neobanks.

This stealth adoption model mirrors how the internet became ubiquitous—not through dramatic announcements, but through gradual integration into existing systems until it became impossible to imagine life without it.

The Coming Bitcoin Arms Race

Morehead envisions a "global arms race" among nations to acquire bitcoin, driven by monetary sovereignty concerns. "Countries will realize, like China, it's super crazy to have 1,000 years of your life savings stored in an asset that [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent can cancel," he argued.

This geopolitical angle adds another dimension to bitcoin's investment thesis—not just as a hedge against inflation, but as protection against monetary weaponization in an increasingly multipolar world.