...people should remember that the Gold quantities involved are arbitrary (in other words, the pricing of gold could be in grams, ounces, pounds, kilograms, even tonnes) so direct price comparisons are meaningless.
For example, right now, in the commodity exchanges, "Cocoa" is listed with a price of 2200$. Does this mean Cocoa is more valuable than Gold (1170$)?
The answer is it depends on what kind of quantities are we measuring. Cocoa is not measured in troy ounces but much, much bigger quantities.
It's the same for the stock market. There are stocks with one, two or three digits, and then there are stocks like Berkshire's which are valued at 250k USD each. Why? Because the stock never got a split. Thus the number of stocks is far smaller and this is compensated by increased value per stock. A company's value is dependent on how many stocks there are multiplied by the value of each stock. If a 100 billion company had just 1 stock, that stock would cost 100 billion. If it had 100 billion stocks, these would cost 1$ each.
Bitcoin is like a Berkshire stock, in the sense of having so few "pieces" or "stocks". That's also why, as far as the BTC v Gold comparison, absolute price is useless: Instead, people should focus on marketcap (mined quantities * value per unit), rate of mining, relative scarcity, potential, etc.
The average person might find Bitcoin "cheap" at 1$ (in an imaginary scenario where 21 billion were issued) and "expensive" with a price of 1000$ (but only 21 million issued) - yet they are exactly the same in terms of marketcap. It's just maths and psychology which affect investment sentiment.
A small infographic is in order:
Ok, all that is cool, but do you have any predictions?
I don't like giving investment advice, so I'll leave it at that. In any case, I do think that 1% of the gold marketcap (~4400 USD) is both viable and desirable.
Unlike people who think Gold and BTC are competitive, I like to view them as complementary. Reason being that in case of a digital economy, where governments control all the switches to our bank accounts, entry and exit to gold via cash can be tracked, overtaxed (disincentives), or banned.
This will in turn necessitate an uncontrolled form of currency that one can use to buy or sell their precious metals without using government money (if it is even allowed). In other words, I predict that the existence and success of alternative, non-government controlled currencies, is essential to the long-run success of the precious metal market. Investors should have no illusions: The precious metal market will not be the same in the age of demonetization and government controlled money flows.