It’s no secret that bitcoin is currently failing its many narratives, including the claim that it can serve as an inflation hedge or a safe-haven asset amid uncertainty.
While gold has climbed more than 80% during this period of high inflation, geopolitical skirmishes, and interest rate uncertainty, bitcoin has dropped 14% year over year.
In theory, assets that protect against inflation should rise when the value of money falls. For gold and the rest of the precious metals complex, that theory has worked. For digital gold, not so much.
That divergence has raised fresh questions: why would anyone buy bitcoin now when precious metals and equities give better returns?
CoinDesk has asked a group of longtime bitcoin bulls, and this is how they are defending buying bitcoin:
Comfort in the known (Jessy Gilger, senior advisor at Gannett Wealth Advisors, a bitcoin-native wealth management firm)
“Gold’s current surge is a temporary political distraction. In times of fear, institutions tend to retreat to what they know because they often lack the foresight to embrace a genuine phase shift in technology. We are currently seeing a historical standard deviation move in the GLD/BTC power law ratio, but hard assets are a long game.
While gold has the heritage, bitcoin has shown itself to be technically steady at a protocol level for over fifteen years. Expect a regression to the mean where bitcoin eventually catches up as the market realizes digital scarcity is more efficient than physical legacy.”
Transfer of ownership (Mark Connors, chief investment officer at Risk Dimensions)
“Zooming Out is so 2025. The signal is provided if you zoom in.” If you “zoom in,” Bitcoin isn’t failing the macro test versus Gold. It is currently capped by three internal forces that most observers miss.
“It is not a demand problem; it is a supply distribution event. Institutional ETF inflows are massive, but they aren’t pushing the price up; they are simply absorbing a decade’s worth of supply being dumped by early adopters. We are witnessing a transfer of ownership, not a failure of interest.”
Tech stock problem (Charlie Morris, CIO ByteTree)
“The curious thing is that the gold bugs and the bitcoin maxis use the same narratives: limited supply, money printing, inflation, war, chaos and so on. Yet I believe gold is the reserve asset for the real world, and bitcoin for the digital world. Today’s problems are in the real world. Bitcoin is not failing, it is merely retreating in line with internet stocks, which it has always been closely correlated with since it came to be.”
Delayed rotation coming? (Peter Lane, CEO Jacobi Asset Management)
“The ‘digital gold’ narrative hasn’t really shown up when it’s been tested. Bitcoin hasn’t behaved like a true inflation hedge or safe haven during periods of geopolitical stress and monetary uncertainty. Instead, gold and silver have been the overwhelming winners in 2025.
There’s a long-standing, mass-market comfort with precious metals that Bitcoin simply hasn’t earned yet. I still think we eventually see a delayed rotation into BTC, but for now investors are gravitating toward what they know and trust.”
Need another demand driver (Anthony Pompliano, Chairman & CEO of ProCap Financial)
“Bitcoin has largely been an inflation hedge for the last half decade, but with deflation likely on the horizon, bitcoin will need to find other demand to continue driving the asset higher. I remain optimistic about bitcoin’s future prospects, but recognize that the macro environment and bitcoin market participants are rapidly evolving.”
A permanent solution to inflation? (David Parkinson – CEO Musquet, BtC lightning)
The ‘digital gold has failed’ take is premature noise. Bitcoin’s fixed supply and network growth keep delivering outsized returns vs. inflation and indeed over gold over a multi-year horizon. Bitcoin is now emerging as the Internet’s native monetary asset. It isn’t a ‘hedge’ against inflation – it’s a permanent solution to it. Gold and other traditional inflation hedge assets are enjoying their moment, ultimately, Bitcoin outlives and outshines them all.
Bitcoin’s time is coming (Andre Dragosch – Bitwise)
“Think the precious metals rally is ultimately due to something that you could call “muscle memory” – in times of uncertainty, investors resort to those assets that they are familiar with first – and that appears to be gold and silver right now.
To be fair, bitcoin is still perceived as risky asset although it has better store-of-value characteristics than gold. But I am pretty confident that bitcoin will start to catch a bid once traditional hard assets have been inflated to obscene levels and capital will start to rotate into more attractively valued assets like bitcoin.
Based on a relative Mayer multiple between bitcoin and gold, bitcoin is already at FTX blow-up levels last seen in 2022 relative to gold. There is also a massive under-pricing of bitcoin relative to both the macro environment in 2026 and level of global money supply that will most likely resolve to the upside over the coming months.
Read more: Bitcoin in a deep bear market against gold, history suggests downside may persist