What to know
- Gold is experiencing significant gains, driven by rate cut expectations and geopolitical risks, while bitcoin struggles to maintain key levels.
- Bitcoin’s performance is hindered by market positioning and macroeconomic factors, contrasting with gold’s role as a reserve asset.
- Gold-backed ETFs have seen consistent growth, with major banks forecasting further price increases in the coming years.
Gold is making fresh highs while bitcoin is struggling to hold key levels, reopening a debate crypto investors never fully settled. If bitcoin is supposed to be digital gold, this is the kind of tape it is meant to win. Right now, it is not.
The question is getting louder because gold is rallying on rate cut expectations and geopolitical risk, while bitcoin has struggled to hold key psychological levels and remains sensitive to the same forces that tend to hit equities and other risk assets.
Gold is up more than 70% this year, with others precious metal silver has rallied about 150%, putting both on track for their strongest annual gains since 1979.
Platinum also pushed to record levels, extending a broader surge across precious metals as investors return to the category as a hedge against geopolitical volatility and long-run currency risk.
Part of what is holding bitcoin back is positioning. The market is still digesting a long stretch of leverage-led trading, and each rebound has been met by quick profit-taking over the past week.
Macro is another drag. Even when traders expect rate cuts, bitcoin tends to need clear conditions for risk-taking, not just a softer path for policy. Bond yields have been volatile, the dollar has whipsawed, and markets have repeatedly shifted into a “preserve capital” mood. That usually helps gold first.
David Miller, chief investment officer at Catalyst Funds and portfolio manager of the Strategy Shares Gold Enhanced Yield ETF, said the divergence is hard to ignore.
“Gold has had a record year, up over 60%. But bitcoin too. You still have this situation where it’s clearly not digital gold,” Miller said, adding that “gold can have a record year while bitcoin is down in the same year.”
Miller said bitcoin can still make sense in portfolios over the long run, especially as a hedge against fiscal expansion and currency debasement. But he argued gold still plays a different role because it is already treated as a reserve asset by central banks.
“What gold does that bitcoin definitely can’t is serve as an actual alternative reserve asset to a currency,” Miller said. “Bitcoin is really a retail play, whereas gold is very much institutional.”
World Gold Council data shows holdings in gold-backed ETFs rose in every month this year except May, pointing to consistent accumulation rather than a short-lived trading burst. Holdings in State Street’s SPDR Gold Trust, the largest gold ETF, have increased by more than 20% in 2025.
Several Wall Street banks have also carried bullish views into next year. Goldman Sachs has forecast prices could rise toward $4,900 an ounce in 2026 under its base case, with risks skewed higher.