Zhu Weisha, January 5, 2026
I. Introduction: Understanding Scarce Assets Through the Valuation Logic of Gold and Bitcoin
Equity valuation is grounded in predictable future earnings and growth potential, with price movements tied to relatively analyzable fundamentals. In contrast, the pricing logic for “store of value” assets like gold and Bitcoin is distinctly different—they lack traditional profit models, and their prices are driven almost entirely by dynamic supply and demand. On the demand side, narratives, consensus, and market sentiment exert a profound influence, leading to more volatile fluctuations.
The key to understanding demand shifts lies in whether the “narrative” resonates and the scope and strength of the “consensus”. The value of such an asset depends on how widely its underlying story is believed and how much capital is willing to back that belief. The stronger the consensus, the larger the participating capital and user base, and the more solid the value foundation. Therefore, analyzing these assets essentially involves dissecting the variables that may shape or subvert market consensus.
Although both are scarce stores of value, Bitcoin’s volatility remains significantly higher than gold’s, leading to its common classification as a risk asset within mainstream frameworks, with its function as a mature “store of value” still evolving. From a production cost perspective, gold’s market price typically far exceeds its extraction cost (currently, for example, about three times the cost). During cyclical market adjustments, Bitcoin’s price may approach or even fall below the global average production cost for miners, highlighting its volatility as a risk asset, in stark contrast to gold. Why do these two scarce stores of value exhibit such different market behaviors? The core reason lies in their distinct user bases and consensus scopes: gold attracts “stability-seekers” pursuing long-term preservation, while Bitcoin holders are mostly “pioneers” embracing higher risk. The current primary bottleneck limiting Bitcoin’s full value realization is that the breadth and depth of its global consensus, and the liquidity derived from it, still fall far short of gold’s.
This analytical framework is equally applicable to understanding the predicament of antiques: antiques possess undeniable scarcity but have long been hampered by extremely low liquidity, resulting in a closed pricing mechanism where their intrinsic value struggles to be fully discovered and matched in the market.
II. Measuring Consensus: Metcalfe’s Law and the Liquidity Premium
How can we quantify the consensus strength of a global asset? Metcalfe’s Law provides a powerful theoretical framework. It states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users (or nodes) (V ∝ n²). Originally used to explain value creation in communication networks and the internet, this law has since been widely applied to social media, platform economies, and even the cryptocurrency field—the more participants, the stronger the network effects, and the greater the overall non-linear value growth.
Empirical research shows that the price of Bitcoin and other crypto assets is highly correlated with the number of active network addresses. Currently, this relationship aligns with a variant of Metcalfe’s Law (with an exponent typically between n^1.5 and n^1.7, rather than a strict n²). In practice, the price of a cryptocurrency project often soars after listing on a major exchange and gaining a large influx of new users, which is an intuitive manifestation of this law. In short, liquidity fosters value; greater liquidity typically leads to a higher pricing benchmark.
Traditional capital markets also exhibit a clear “liquidity premium”. Taking the Chinese stock market as an example, the A-shares and B-shares of the same company, despite representing identical shareholder rights, often show significant valuation discounts due to liquidity differences. Historically, the notable price disparity between A-shares and B-shares of the same Chinese company, stemming from different investor bases and liquidity, serves as a classic case of the ‘liquidity premium’, fully demonstrating the market’s pricing power for liquidity itself.
Although in equity markets, capital concentration can sometimes be more critical than user count (for instance, Apple has far fewer shareholders than Bitcoin has active addresses, yet its market capitalization ranks among the highest globally), liquidity remains a core element for value discovery and realization. For non-productive assets like gold, Bitcoin, and even antiques, the ultimate manifestation of global consensus is precisely the breadth and depth of liquidity: a broader participant base and more frequent trading activity jointly drive prices toward a higher and more stable equilibrium.
III. The Value of Liquidity: The Core Engine and Key Metric for Antique Financialization
The market evolution of gold and Bitcoin reveals a core principle: scarcity is the foundation of value, while liquidity is the “catalyst” and “amplifier” for value release. In contrast, the antique market has long been confined to sporadic transactions between auction houses and private collectors, lacking a public, continuous, and deep pricing mechanism. This has led to severely insufficient liquidity and long-term suppression of its valuation.
To align the true value of antiques with their scarcity, a breakthrough via financialization is essential. Through technologies like blockchain, physical antique assets can be digitally authenticated, recorded on-chain, and fragmented into standardized digital equity tokens (such as Tokens or NFTs) for circulation on compliant trading platforms. This process will fundamentally transform the liquidity paradigm for antique assets, attracting a broader range of investors beyond traditional collection circles.
By 2026, significant progress has been made in the field of artwork and Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization. Several international platforms have successfully implemented “fractional ownership” models for artwork, allowing investors to own a share of high-value artwork by holding tokens representing partial equity. Within this framework, Metcalfe’s Law applicable in the same manner—as the number of holding addresses and trading users for antique digital assets grows, the resulting value network will experience non-linear appreciation. Simultaneously, the transparent, immutable nature of on-chain data makes the “growth in the number of active addresses” itself a key, observable, and precisely quantifiable value indicator.
This is precisely the core foresight revealed in “Redefining the Valuation Metrics for Antiques“: when antiques transition from a closed, niche auction market to an open, mass digital trading market, their value determination mechanism undergoes a fundamental shift—evolving from reliance on “niche consensus pricing” to being based on “broad-market liquidity pricing.” In this process, liquidity is no longer merely a channel for value realization; it becomes an indispensable component of value itself.
IV. Conclusion and Outlook
The liquidity premium is not an abstract economic concept but the core mechanism driving gold prices above production costs, the exponential growth of Bitcoin’s network value, and the future potential explosion in antique asset value. Looking ahead, if the financialization of antiques can deeply integrate the transparency advantages of blockchain with the compliance requirements of regulatory frameworks, it holds the potential to unlock a new era of value: enabling more ordinary investors to participate in scarce asset investments, continuously expanding the consensus scope, and achieving exponential release of asset value.
This is more than just a technologically driven financial innovation; it is a profound process of “asset democratization.” We anticipate the emergence of more innovative platforms and supportive policies to jointly propel antiques from “static treasure” in museums and collection room’s into liquid assets with “dynamic life” in the capital markets.
Of course, this process must still overcome challenges related to regulatory compliance, physical asset authentication, and market volatility to advance steadily.
