The bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry has struggled with social media giant Facebook's troubled plans to launch a bitcoin rival, dubbed libra, next year.
Some have suggested technology companies would be better off adopting bitcoin than attempting to create a centralized alternative, as micro-blogging platform Twitter is doing.
Now, Facebook's head of cryptocurrency projects, David Marcus, has said that he sees bitcoin as "digital gold," and while it's held back by its extreme volatility, bitcoin "serves a completely different purpose."
"I don’t think of bitcoin as a currency," Marcus said, speaking at the New York Times DealBook Conference last week. "It’s actually not a great medium of exchange because of it’s volatility. I see it as digital gold."
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Many have made the comparison between bitcoin and gold in the past, with those most bullish on bitcoin hoping that the digital token could eventually surpass gold's $8 trillion market value.
The total value of all bitcoin is currently just $160 billion, some 50-times less than gold.
