Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel believes bitcoin has stood out as an inflation hedge. "Digital coins are the new gold for the millennials," he told CNBC last Friday.

Gold disappointed investors in 2021 as a traditional hedge against inflation, seeing its worst year since 2015.

Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel believes one asset has stood out as an inflation hedge for many younger folks in the past months: bitcoin.

"Let's face the fact, I think bitcoin as an inflation hedge in the minds of many of the younger investors has replaced gold," he told CNBC last Friday. "Digital coins are the new gold for the millennials

Siegel also reminded that older generations witnessed how gold had soared during the inflation of the 1970s. “This time, it is not in favor,” he added.

Gold, which traditionally emerged as an asset class providing a hedge against inflation, failed to meet investors’ expectations in 2021, recording its worst year since 2015 and dropping around 5% to close the year at $1,800. Despite massive price fluctuations over the course of 2021, BTC had surged around 70% by the end of 2021.

Several prominent global investors supported BTC over gold in 2021, with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban arguing that Bitcoin was “better than gold” in October 2021. Starwood Capital Group co-founder Barry Sternlicht also said that gold was actually “worthless” and that he is holding BTC because every government was printing massive amounts of money.

But despite BTC becoming an increasingly popular asset against gold, many financial and crypto experts believe that it is yet to prove inflation hedge status.

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While Gold is a tangible asset. Bitcoin is just Bitcoin.

All assets have their period of performance which is dependent on a large number of factors related to Economic, political, Risk averseness (Risk on, Risk off), Global pandemic in case of 2020, Market fundamentals.

All these affects the inflow & outflow of capital across all asset class. No market goes in a one way direction there's buy & corrections, there's sell & corrections.

Obviously digital assets are & will stay due to technological advancements.

But then what really drives the price of these things? There's no proper regulations leaving room for one man markets where someone influential & with the capital backing (running into hundreds of millions of dollars or Euros) can drive market prices amongst other controversies.

Both asset classes cannot be neglected. They both play their roles in the global financial markets.