North America COO of the largest gold mining firm in the world, Barrick Gold, Catherine Raw, has said that she does not think cryptocurrencies are competitive with gold.
Raw said this yesterday at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women International Summit. She said:
“The very tangible nature of gold is what keeps a special place for it. So it will always have value, whatever the price is, I don’t know, but it will not be zero. Whereas cryptocurrency could be zero — that’s the difference.”
The report says that once gold is being used for jewelry and electronics it is guaranteed to have some value. Raw also accepted that “the phenomenon of cryptocurrency is here to stay.”
Raw admitted that as of now, parties buying gold are mostly the Indian and Chinese markets, institutions and central banks. She hopes that the gold industry will be able to win back young investors that ended up preferring crypto assets to gold.
She went on to say that among young investors, there is an impression that the only people buying gold are the old people who are still scared of the internet. She said:
“What I would like is actually to see gold harness that. […] I think the gold industry has got its head in the sand by not taking advantage of a changing demographic. […] My ambition over time is actually to see how as a gold industry we can harness that younger demographic.”