Bitcoin may be the currency of choice during the next recession, says Martin Tillier of NASDAQ. He argues that the correlation between gold and bitcoin prices may be a mere coincidence.

In his column on NASDAQ site, Tillier investigated the possible connection between gold and bitcoin:

“We can see that a) In the past gold has soared in times of financial crisis; b) Confidence in both the Euro and Chinese stocks fell at the same time in June; c) at the same time the price of gold was falling; and d) at that time the price of Bitcoin was increasing. Logically, all of that suggests that Bitcoin has replaced gold as the safe haven of choice in times of trouble.”

Tillier warns against any premature judgement on the possible connection between gold and bitcoin.“There is simply not enough evidence to draw a broad conclusion such as that,” says the expert.

He argues that bitcoin might be useful as a method to prevent money loss in the future.

“It seems to me that while the case for Bitcoin as a safe haven isn’t proven, there is enough evidence to make owning some as insurance against the inevitability of another recession a smart move.”

Martin Tillier had a long career working on different exchanges. In 2012, he left the industry to open a successful wine shop, but later changed his mind and became a financial advisor and a columnist for the NASDAQ website. He writes a column about Bitcoin once every two month.

This January, CoinFox wrote about Tillier’s forecast for the price of bitcoin in 2015. At that time, he spoke about “some degree of stability”. This prediction proved correct – after some fluctuations in the first quarter of 2015 the price of bitcoin stabilised in the second quarter of the year. It demonstrated some growth during the Greek crisis and China market crash, but never reached the peaks of 2014.