The Great Generational Asset-Off:
From Gold Bars to TikTok Stocks
Let’s set the scene: Bitcoin has smashed through the $120,000 ceiling, stablecoins are multiplying faster than conspiracy theories on Facebook, and suddenly, the hottest topic in finance is how to drag real-world assets onto the blockchain. Yes, we’ve officially entered the era where your childhood baseball card collection might end up “on-chain,” and, honestly, it was only a matter of time. This is exactly the sort of trend that kicked off our current series of articles, especially as our friends at Robinhood are now trying to build a decentralized secondaries exchange. Because, apparently, nothing says “future of finance” quite like trading your neighbor’s timeshare on a blockchain run by a DAO named after a meme.
But here’s the real kicker: the most important part of this isn’t blockchain adoption itself. No, what actually matters is how the very fabric of finance and investing is being rewoven before our eyes. We’ve spent weeks dissecting the seismic shifts in saving and spending habits across generations, but the real game-changer might be the way social media and AI copilots are sneaking into the retail investor’s toolkit. Yes, your next hot stock tip could come sandwiched between a TikTok dance and an AI-generated meme.
Let’s not kid ourselves, right now, the amount of money Millennials and Gen Z are moving is a rounding error compared to the Baby Boomer war chest. But here’s the twist: we’re next in line, and the habits we’re forming, like choosing to “invest” via a gamified app instead of doomscrolling Instagram, will shape how trillions of dollars slosh around in the future. Of course, there’s a catch: attention spans among young people are dropping faster than the price of NFTs in a bear market, while the tidal wave of available information just keeps growing. That’s precisely why we’re building tools to make sense of the chaos to help us predict, scale, and maybe, just maybe, keep up.
So, picture a future where hypercommunication is the norm, and automated bots make investment decisions faster than your grandma can whip up a batch of enchiladas de mole. That’s not science fiction, it’s the new normal. Welcome to the investment toolstack of tomorrow, where the only thing more overwhelming than the technology is the existential dread that comes with it.
So, continuing with these reflections about financial absurdity, we are still trying to answer questions like: Who actually owns the world? Why does Gen Z trust an app with a cartoon squirrel more than a bank with marble columns? And how long until someone tries to tokenize their own existential dread?
Today, we are going to study a timeline, a very ironic one, from the gold-hoarding Boomers to the meme-investing Zoomers, and project this whole circus to 2050. Spoiler: the future is weird, and possibly sponsored by a fintech startup.
1946–1980: Boomers, Gold, Guilt, and the Birth of the Asset Class
The Scene: The Baby Boomers emerge, fueled by postwar optimism, affordable housing, and the belief that “saving” means putting cash in a passbook and watching it multiply like rabbits.
Market Share Leaders: Gold sits atop the throne (and still does), with banks, oil, and blue-chip stocks as the establishment’s holy trinity.
Tech Innovation: The most advanced financial technology? The pocket calculator. And maybe the ATM, which was basically a vending machine for cash and existential crises.
Fun Fact: In 1971, the U.S. left the gold standard. Gold prices soared, and Boomers everywhere learned that “hedging” wasn’t just something you did to your lawn.
1980–2000: Millennials, Dot-Coms, and the Equity Culture
The Scene: Millennials come of age just as the internet arrives. Suddenly, you can buy stocks online, and the only thing riskier than day trading tech stocks is using dial-up to do it.
Market Share Leaders: Microsoft, Apple, and the rise of mutual funds. Oil and gas are still printing money, but now there’s a new kid on the block: the S&P 500 index fund.
Tech Innovation: Online brokerages, 401(k)s (institutional retirement plan in the US), and the first robo-advisors. Financial advice is now available 24/7, mostly from your neighbor who just read a book called “How to Get Rich in Your Pajamas.”
Fun Fact: By 2000, more Americans owned stocks than ever before. Also, more Americans lost money in tech stocks than ever before. Coincidence? I call this era, “How we learned to print money by refinancing debt”.
2000–2025: Gen Z, Fintech Frenzy, and the Meme Economy
The Scene: Enter Gen Z, the first generation to grow up with smartphones, social media, and a healthy skepticism of anything that smells like “legacy finance.” Their idea of a “bull market” is a viral TikTok challenge involving literal bulls.
Market Share Leaders: Gold ($22.5T), NVIDIA ($4T), Microsoft ($3.7T), Apple ($3.1T), Bitcoin ($2.4T), Amazon ($2.4T), Tether ($0.1T). The asset leaderboard is a tech-and-crypto buffet, with gold still flexing its old-school muscle.
Tech Innovation:
Mobile-first banking: Chime, Venmo, Cash App, if your bank doesn’t have a meme, Gen Z isn’t interested.
Fractional investing: Why buy a whole share of Apple when you can own 0.0003 of it and still brag on Instagram?
Buy Now, Pay Later: Because nothing says “financial responsibility” more than paying for a $40 hoodie over six months' instalments.
Social investing: Robinhood and Public.com make trading feel like a group chat, except with more risk and fewer emojis.
Fun Fact: Gen Z’s projected spending power is $12 trillion by 2030. If they pooled it all together, they could almost buy NVIDIA… or at least a few more Taylor Swift tours.
2025–2050: The Great Asset Showdown
The Scene: Titans vs. Challengers
By 2050, the financial world is sharply divided: old titans like gold, oil, defense, and tech giants face off against a surge of digital-first challengers—fintechs, sustainable brands, and whatever replaces TikTok. It’s less a peaceful coexistence, more a tense standoff, as each side eyes the other’s shrinking or expanding share.
Gold & Tech Giants:
Gold remains the ultimate safe haven at $22 trillion. Tech behemoths NVIDIA, Microsoft, and Apple are still massive, but their dominance is slipping. The top five tech firms’ share of the S&P 500 dropped from 25% to 18% in a decade, as Gen Z’s $60 trillion in wealth flows toward companies with transparency and social impact.
Oil & Gas:
Still vital, especially during geopolitical flare-ups, like Brent crude spiking to $150 after the 2029 Middle East conflict. Yet, renewables are catching up: by 2045, they will provide 60% of global electricity, and fossil fuel majors will lose a third of their market cap to green upstarts.
Defense/Military:
Defense stocks surge with every crisis, as seen in the 2042 Pacific standoff when global defense spending hit $3.2 trillion. Promises of “peace dividends” rarely last, and budgets remain high as new threats emerge.
Challenger Brands:
Digital-first players like Chime, Robinhood, and Acorns are no longer just upstarts—the top 10 fintechs and sustainable brands reach a combined $2 trillion market cap by 2050, up from $100 billion in 2025. Their growth is fueled by Gen Z’s loyalty to ethical, community-driven companies. Still, they’re dwarfed by legacy giants—unless global mergers or a super-app shift the balance.
Tech Innovation Facing Gen Z (and Beyond):
AI-driven investing: Robo-advisors get smarter, and Gen Z starts trusting algorithms more than their parents ever trusted their brokers.
Decentralized finance (DeFi): Blockchain-based platforms let anyone, anywhere, lend, borrow, or invest, no bank required, just WiFi and optimism.
Sustainable finance: Carbon-neutral portfolios, impact investing, and companies that actually have to prove they’re not destroying the planet.
Hyper-personalization: Your investment portfolio is now as unique as your Spotify playlist, and probably just as volatile.
Fun Fact: By 2050, Gen Z and Millennials will control the majority of global wealth. The companies that win their trust by being transparent, ethical, and digital could finally start to rival the market caps of today’s titans.
The 2050 Crystal Ball: What Needs to Happen for Challengers to Win?
Scale Up: Challenger brands must go global and serve billions, not millions.
Tech Disruption: Breakthroughs in renewables, decentralized finance, and AI could finally erode the dominance of oil, gas, and defense.
Policy Shifts: Carbon taxes, ESG mandates, and peace (hey, we can dream) could redirect trillions away from legacy sectors.
Gen Z’s Power: As this generation inherits wealth and voting power, their demand for fairness and transparency could force even the oil barons and defense giants to play nice or at least pretend to.
So, what have we learned? The asset leaderboard is like a never-ending season of “Succession”: the old guard clings to power, the upstarts plot their takeover, and everyone’s portfolio is one tweet away from chaos.
Gen Z’s $12 trillion is a force, but for now, it’s a drop in the gold-and-tech ocean. The next 25 years will be a battle between tradition and innovation, fossil fuels and renewables, secrecy and radical transparency. If history is any guide, the winners will be those who adapt fast.
And if you’re reading this on a phone, in a coffee shop, while micro-investing your spare change and debating whether to buy a carbon-neutral NFT, congratulations: you are the future of finance. Just remember, in 2050, you’ll be the one rolling your eyes at whatever comes after Gen Z. And you’ll probably still be paying off that hoodie.