Bitcoin ownership in the US has overtaken gold. River Financial's July research found that 49.6 million American adults, or 18.6% of the population, now hold bitcoin, compared with 28.8 million, or 10.8%, who hold gold. That's a gap of nearly 21 million people, and it points to something broader than a rotation in retail taste.
The numbers behind the shift
Bitcoin ownership among Americans climbed from 14.3% to 18.6% in a little over six months, according to River's data. For an asset still known for volatility, that pace of adoption stands out. Americans collectively hold roughly 42% of the global bitcoin supply, and US-listed public companies account for 92.7% of all bitcoin held by publicly traded firms worldwide, a combined 1.24 million BTC. The US government's own holding, 328,372 BTC acquired mostly through asset seizures, is worth more than $26 billion at current prices .
That stockpile has become a reference point for reserve legislation. The American Reserve Modernization Act, introduced in Congress in May, would direct the Treasury to study accumulating bitcoin using budget-neutral methods. Earlier coverage described the bill as targeting up to 1 million BTC over five years, but the introduced bill text dropped that specific number in favor of a study, so the 1 million figure should be read as an earlier proposal rather than the bill's current target.
Wall Street's posture has shifted as well. Several large US asset managers opened bitcoin ETF distribution to their financial advisors this year, putting the asset in front of planners who previously had little reason to raise it with clients.
The macro backdrop
The ownership numbers sit on top of a bigger move. On August 19, the US Treasury announced it would double its liquidity support buybacks for longer-dated government bonds, raising the cap from $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, running September 9 through November 4. The market reaction was immediate: the dollar index fell about 0.9% to its lowest level since May 29, and gold rose roughly 2% to around $4,480 an ounce.
A policy that pushes down long-end yields to support bond market liquidity also weakens the dollar's relative appeal, and both gold and bitcoin trade as alternatives to it. That's why the two moved together on the announcement, despite usually being framed as rivals rather than allies.
The bitcoin-to-gold ratio
Strive CEO Matt Cole has pointed to the bitcoin-to-gold ratio as a leading indicator worth watching. In comments made this week , Cole noted that bitcoin bottomed against gold in February 2026, about five months before its dollar price bottomed in July. He argues the same lag showed up at the top of the last cycle, when bitcoin peaked against gold in December 2024 but didn't peak in dollar terms until October 2025.
If that pattern holds, bitcoin's recent breakout against both gold and the dollar in the same week is a signal worth tracking rather than a coincidence.
Structural tailwinds
Two forces are doing much of the work behind bitcoin's current setup. The first is the dollar: Treasury's buyback program signals a tolerance for a weaker currency, and a dollar index that holds below its May low would remove a headwind bitcoin hasn't faced this cycle.
The second is AI. As intelligence gets cheaper and more widely available, advantages that used to come from scarce insight or software capability get commoditized faster, and that's pushing capital toward assets that can't be replicated — bitcoin, gold, and silver among them.
Bitcoin's pitch is that it combines fixed supply with properties gold lacks in a digital economy: instant settlement, global transferability, and native compatibility with digital financial infrastructure.
Ownership isn't the same as value
The ownership numbers are the headline, but they're only part of the picture. Gold's market capitalization still dwarfs bitcoin's, so leading on ownership share doesn't mean bitcoin has closed the value gap in institutional allocation — those are different measures. What has changed is the trajectory. The government's 328,372 BTC and corporate America's 1.24 million BTC suggest bitcoin is shifting from a retail speculation story into something closer to a sovereign and corporate treasury asset, a role gold has occupied for a long time.
What would confirm the shift
Three things would indicate whether August 19 marked a genuine turning point rather than a one-off reaction. First, whether the dollar index holds below its May low, confirming underlying weakness rather than a temporary dip. Second, whether the Treasury's buyback program, which runs through November 4, gets extended or expanded — if it does, bitcoin price targets of $100,000 or higher by year-end become more plausible. Third, whether the bitcoin-to-gold ratio keeps climbing, which would suggest capital rotating out of gold and into bitcoin rather than both assets simply rising together. The macro conditions are lining up in bitcoin's favor. Whether the capital follows is still an open question.
