Bitcoin’s corporate adoption is increasingly resembling the “nationalization path” of gold leading up to 1971, presenting a new centralization concern, according to Willy Woo.
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Corporate crypto treasuries have surged past $100 billion, raising concerns among analysts that the United States may one day nationalize some of these holdings in a move reminiscent of the gold standard era.
have surpassed $100 billion of digital asset holdings, with Bitcoin () treasury firms amassing 791,662 BTC worth roughly $95 billion by the end of July, representing around 3.98% of the circulating supply.
The growing corporate holdings may present a new centralized point of vulnerability for Bitcoin, which may see the world’s first cryptocurrency follow the same “nationalization path” as gold in 1971, according to crypto analyst Willy Woo.
“If the US dollar is structurally getting weak and China is coming in, it’s a fair point that the US might do an offer to all the treasury companies and centralize where it could be then put into a digital form, not create a new gold standard,” Woo said during a panel discussion at Baltic Honeybadger 2025, adding:
“You could then rug it like happened in 1971. And it’s all centralized around the digital Bitcoin. The whole history repeats again back to the beginning.”
In 1971, US President Richard Nixon ended the Bretton Woods system, suspending the dollar’s convertibility into gold and abandoning the fixed $35-per-ounce rate, effectively ending the gold standard.
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Woo noted that institutional adoption is still a critical step for Bitcoin to replace the US dollar, surpass gold and become a new monetary standard. “That’s not going to happen until you get the large gatekeepers of capital opening up to Bitcoin and pouring money in,” he said.
The analyst’s comments come amid a period of accelerating institutional adoption, two weeks after surpassed 1,000 BTC in balance sheet holdings each, Cointelegraph reported on July 25.
Nationalization efforts may also target Bitcoin whales, according to Preston Pysh, co-founder of the Investors Podcast Network and Bitcoin venture fund Ego Death Capital.
“They’re going to take the Bitcoin because it’s going to have an institutional custodian that does not want to go to jail,” he explained, adding that the first targets may be “private entities that have a lot of Bitcoin.”
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Despite the nationalization concerns, the growing corporate adoption may present a potential $100 trillion market opportunity.
Bitcoin is already a $2 trillion asset at just 16 years of age, said Woo, adding that “we’ve got 100x to grow, and it’s probably going to take decades to get there.”
Woo’s projection aligns with prior forecasts from Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream, who has described Bitcoin as in the long term.
“A sustainable and scalable $100-$200 trillion trade front-running hyperbitcoinization. scalable enough for most big listed companies to move to BTC treasury,” said Back in an April 26 X .
refers to the theoretical future where Bitcoin becomes the largest global currency, replacing fiat money due to its inflationary economics.
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