The Claim
Strategy’s stack is worth about $71.6 billion at the moment. Bitcoin priced in gold peaked at 40.1 ounces around December 2024 and now sits near 20.4 ounces today. Bitcoin treasury Strive’s VP of investments, Adam Livingston, asks what happens if two things occur:
- Gold rises 15% to $4,760 an ounce.
- The $BTC/gold ratio returns to its old high. Not a new high, just a level it has already printed approx. 21 months ago.
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The answer is bitcoin at $190,858 and a Strategy treasury worth $161.8 billion.
Gold Gets Back to $4,760?
Gold futures closed at about $4,162 an ounce yesterday, so a 15% climb lands near the aforementioned target. Gold has been far higher this year as it broke above $5,000 in January on geopolitical stress, then gave back more than 20% from its peak. The last leg down came fast, when gold and silver shed $550 billion in a matter of hours on Sept. 28.
The second step checks out on the data as well and using daily closes for bitcoin’s price and gold futures, the ratio tops out near 40 ounces on Dec. 17, 2024, when bitcoin traded around $106,140 and gold near $2,662. Livingston’s 40.1, in this regard, probably reflects intraday or spot pricing. Today the figure is about 20.4 ounces, with bitcoin near $84,600, a drop of roughly 49%.
In other words, an ounce of gold buys twice as much bitcoin as it did 21 months ago. Gold ran up while bitcoin fell back from its highs, and that gap is what the scenario bets will close.
Multiply it out and the numbers hold, i.e. 40.1 ounces at $4,760 is about $190,860 per bitcoin. Strategy’s 847,666 $BTC, bought for about $63.95 billion at an average of $75,437 a coin, would then be worth roughly $161.8 billion, a paper gain near $98 billion.
In dollars, though, $190,858 would be a huge new high. Bitcoin’s record is roughly $126,000, set on Oct. 6, 2025, and Livingston’s target sits about 51% above it.
Lastly, it bears mentioning that $BTC and gold haven’t been moving together lately. Since the Sept. 28 sell-off, bitcoin’s price has bounced from about $82,780 to roughly $84,600 while gold has gone flat near $4,160, and the ratio has only started to lift off its lows.
What Markets Are Predicting
While many experts and bettors alike see a bullish near-term future for bitcoin, the numbers all sit well below the $190,000 mark:
- Citi: A 12-month bitcoin price target of $113,000.
- Polymarket: About 60% odds of $90,000 in October.
- Kalshi: A 34% chance of $100,000 in 2026.
Therefore, even though Livingston’s math is internally sound, its biggest assumption isn’t gold but rather that bitcoin can win back nearly two years of underperformance against the metal in a single move.