The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest bank by total assets, recently compared bitcoin to digital gold and labeled Ethereum “digital oil” in a report. The bank emphasized the roles of these cryptocurrencies in the digital economy and their contributions to technological advancements.
ICBC Sees Bitcoin as Digital Gold, Ethereum as Digital Oil
The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), the world’s largest bank with $6.6 trillion in total assets as of March, compared bitcoin to digital gold and labeled ethereum “digital oil” in an equity research report, published on June 6. The report provides an in-depth macroeconomic analysis of the digital asset ecosystem. The bank’s analysts explained:
Bitcoin retains the scarcity similar to gold through mathematical consensus, while solving its problem of being difficult to divide, difficult to identify authenticity, and inconvenient to carry.
The ICBC analysts asserted that bitcoin’s “monetary attributes are gradually weakening, while its asset attributes are constantly strengthening.”
The report refers to ethereum as “digital oil,” emphasizing its pivotal role in the digital economy. The analysts explained:
Ethereum has been continuously upgrading its technology in terms of security, scalability, and sustainability, providing technical power for the digital future.
“In addition, the introduction and development of stablecoins provide a bridge for the digital currency market to connect to the real world,” the report notes. The analysts further detailed that Ethereum has introduced Turing completeness through its programming language (Solidity) and virtual machine (EVM). This innovation enables the creation of complex smart contracts and applications, which are crucial for decentralized finance (defi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They added that Ethereum’s technological advancements position it as a key player in the future digital infrastructure, driving progress in security, scalability, and sustainability.
Source: Bitcoin
