Updated September 14, 2026
One bitcoin is worth a certain number of ounces of gold. That number comes from dividing the bitcoin price by the price of an ounce, and it has a long memory, since it stood below a third of an ounce at the end of 2014 and close to forty at the end of 2024. It is the simplest measure you can take of the two assets, and it is also the one that best tells their shared story.
This page gathers what the data actually says about that ratio, and what it does not. You will find the calculation, the milestones of the ratio since 2010, a comparison of the two market capitalisations, and one measure that most bitcoin-versus-gold comparisons leave out, their real correlation, computed over sixteen years.
What the bitcoin-to-gold ratio measures
The ratio reads both ways. Divide the bitcoin price by the price of an ounce of gold and you get the number of ounces one bitcoin buys. Invert the division and you get the fraction of a bitcoin an ounce buys. The first reading is the more useful one, because the number has stayed above one since 2017.
This division has a useful property, it cancels the currency out. When the dollar loses value, bitcoin and gold both rise, and the ratio does not move. What it shows is how one moves against the other, stripped of the unit they are counted in. Anyone holding both reads here what they would gain by swapping one for the other.
The gold price used here
Gold has no single continuous quote the way a share does. The market reference is the London Bullion Market Association fixing, set twice every business day in London since 1968. This site uses the afternoon fixing, which is published openly.
One consequence is worth knowing before reading any chart that compares the two, because gold does not trade on Saturdays, Sundays or London bank holidays, while bitcoin trades without interruption. Over a short window a daily ratio therefore carries a two-day plateau every week, which is not a market move but an absence of quotes. That is why the module below does not go under one month.
The chart uses a logarithmic scale, and that is not a refinement, since the ratio went from five ten-thousandths of an ounce in 2010 to more than forty in 2024, a factor of eighty thousand. On a linear scale everything before 2017 would be flattened onto the axis.
Sixteen years of the ratio, step by step
The ratio crossed one ounce for the first time in the autumn of 2017, in the middle of bitcoin's first great retail wave. Before that date one bitcoin traded for a fraction of an ounce, and the comparison was more of a curiosity than a financial measure.
| Year end | Ounces of gold per bitcoin | Year high | What was happening |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 0.3 | 0.7 | Bitcoin emerges from the Mt. Gox collapse |
| 2016 | 0.9 | 0.9 | The year before the first great cycle |
| 2017 | 11.9 | 15.0 | Bitcoin passes one ounce, then ten, within months |
| 2018 | 2.8 | 12.3 | The crypto winter drags the ratio below three ounces |
| 2020 | 14.5 | 14.5 | The first purchases by listed companies |
| 2021 | 25.7 | 37.1 | Two cycle peaks, in April and again in November |
| 2022 | 9.1 | 25.6 | The collapse of the exchanges cuts the ratio by three |
| 2024 | 35.9 | 40.3 | US spot funds, and the record for the ratio |
The record for the ratio dates from 18 December 2024, at 40.3 ounces of gold per bitcoin. It was not set on the day bitcoin set its dollar record, and that is instructive, because the two records only coincide if gold stands still while bitcoin climbs.
What the recent period changed
Since that record the ratio has fallen by more than half, while bitcoin lost only about a third of its dollar value over the same stretch. The difference comes from gold, which set records of its own in the meantime. An asset can therefore fall modestly in one currency and sharply against another asset, and that is exactly what the ratio makes visible and what a dollar price chart hides.
To place bitcoin against its own past rather than against gold, two other measures on this site answer, the drawdown from the record and the Mayer multiple.
Comparing market caps rather than prices
Comparing a unit price has its limits, because one bitcoin and one ounce do not exist in the same quantities. The comparison most people care about is the total mass, that is, what all the bitcoins weigh against all the gold.
The calculation needs two quantities. On the bitcoin side the number of units in circulation is known to the block, since it follows issuance rules fixed at the outset and paced by the halving. On the gold side the figure is the stock mined since antiquity, which the World Gold Council estimates at roughly 222,600 tonnes as of the end of the second quarter of 2026.
That stock is an estimate, not a measurement. Nobody counts the world's gold, mine production is added up from the records that exist, and the uncertainty sits mostly on ancient gold. No open source publishes the figure continuously, and it is the only data point on this site revised by hand.
The result of that division appears on the card above, in the two market cap lines. As a benchmark, bitcoin would have to be multiplied by a double-digit factor for the two masses to match, at constant quantities on both sides. That is not a forecast and nobody can turn it into one, because it is a division whose result changes daily with both prices.
Why this site does not make it a second chart
The market cap ratio and the price ratio draw almost the same curve. The reason is arithmetic, since moving from one to the other means multiplying by the ratio of the quantities, and bitcoin supply grows by less than 1% a year while the gold stock grows by about 1.4%. Measured on both curves on a logarithmic scale since 2010, they track each other at 0.9996, and at 0.9999 since 2018.
Two charts would therefore have shown the same drawing up to a coefficient. The capitalisation share stays, but as a reading of the present, in the two discs on the card, while the curve keeps the history.
The correlation between bitcoin and gold, measured
Many comparisons between the two assets claim they resemble each other, or that they move in opposite directions, without ever giving a figure. The measurement is straightforward, and it gives a clear answer.
Across the 4,027 days on which both quoted together, from 18 August 2010 to 11 September 2026, the correlation of their daily changes is 0.033. That is close to nothing, because a correlation of zero means that knowing how one moved tells you strictly nothing about the other.
You might expect that average to hide stretches of strong alignment. Computing the correlation over a rolling ninety-day window gives the opposite:
- it stays between −0.32 and +0.30 over the whole period
- it sits below 0.2 in absolute terms 89% of the time
- it has never passed 0.4 in sixteen years, not once
The yearly medians confirm the absence of any lasting trend. They hover around zero from one year to the next, with a high of +0.18 in 2026 and a low of −0.04 in 2016. No single year stands out.
What that result implies
Two assets whose movements are uncorrelated neither substitute for one another nor confirm one another. The phrase “digital gold” describes an intention, a programmed scarcity and a holding horizon, it does not describe shared market behaviour. On daily moves, the two live separate lives.
That is also why this site publishes no correlation module. A chart trembling around zero at all times would always answer the same thing, and an indicator that does not vary teaches nothing to whoever looks it up.
What actually separates the two
Since the market does not treat them alike, it is worth looking at what genuinely sets them apart. Four differences shape everything else.
| Gold | Bitcoin | |
|---|---|---|
| Total quantity | Unknown, growing by about 1.4% a year through mining | Capped at 21 million by a rule fixed in 2009 |
| Issuance pace | Depends on price, geology and extraction costs | Set in advance, halved every 210,000 blocks |
| Verification | Requires a physical assay, a laboratory and a chain of trust | Verified on an ordinary computer, in seconds |
| Transport | Costly, slow, insured, constrained by borders | Almost free, whatever the distance |
| Track record | Five thousand years of monetary use | Sixteen years of quoted prices |
The last row matters more than it looks. An asset observed for only sixteen years, two or three complete cycles among them, does not offer the statistical base of a metal whose behaviour is known across centuries. Any comparison of volatility or return between the two compares samples of very different sizes.
The first row cuts the other way. Bitcoin's cap is known to the unit and verifiable by anyone, while the quantity of gold available remains an estimate revised every year. Depending on which criterion you favour, certainty about quantity or length of observation, you do not reach the same conclusion.
What the ratio does not say
A rising ratio does not mean bitcoin is doing well. It means bitcoin is doing better than gold over the observed period, which happens both when bitcoin rises and when gold falls further. The two situations look alike on the chart and have nothing in common in reality.
Three further limits are worth knowing before leaning on this measure:
- the two prices of a single day are not recorded at the same instant
- a Saturday ratio moves only because bitcoin moved
- neither storage costs, nor the risk of losing a key, nor tax enter the calculation
The first comes from the recording time, the afternoon fixing being set at a fixed London hour while the bitcoin close used here is midnight universal time. The second comes from closing days, which carry the last known fixing forward. The third comes from the cost of holding, very different on each side and beyond the reach of any price ratio.
Finally, this ratio says nothing about the future. It is a photograph of the past and the present, and its value lies in its readability, not in any predictive power. The detail of the calculation and the sources sits on the methodology and sources page.
Neighbouring measures on this site
The gold ratio places bitcoin against another asset. Three other measures place it against itself, and they read together.
The drawdown from the record gives the distance between today's price and its all-time high, and the time spent below that high. The Mayer multiple sets the price against its two-hundred-day average, which tells you whether it is pulling away from its recent past or returning to it. The key dates in Bitcoin put the moves back in context.
The three answer different questions, and none replaces the others. A bitcoin close to its dollar record can sit far from its record in ounces of gold, as the stretch that opened in December 2024 has shown.
Frequently asked questions about bitcoin and gold
How many ounces of gold is one bitcoin worth today?
Today's value appears in the module on this page, recomputed at every data update. It also reads on the bitcoin price page of this site, in the same category.
Is bitcoin really digital gold?
The phrase describes an intention, not market behaviour. The correlation between the daily changes of the two assets is 0.033 over sixteen years, which amounts to saying they move independently of one another.
What is the market cap of gold compared with bitcoin?
Both amounts appear on the card on this page, along with the share bitcoin represents. Gold rests on a stock estimated at 222,600 tonnes, bitcoin on a number of units known exactly.
Why does the ratio fall while bitcoin rises?
Because gold rises more over the same period. The ratio measures relative performance, so it retreats as soon as gold advances faster, even when both are gaining ground.
Where does the gold price used here come from?
From the London Bullion Market Association afternoon fixing, published every business day since 1968 and freely accessible. Closing days carry the last known fixing forward.
Every value on this page is recomputed at each data update, three times a day for bitcoin and at every fixing for gold. The historical measures quoted in the text were established on 14 September 2026 on the full series since 18 August 2010.