Two assets. Same calendar year. Very different stories.
In October 2025, Bitcoin hit an all-time high near $128,000. This week it trades around $73,000 — down roughly 43% from its peak, having sliced through its 50-day, 100-day, and 200-day moving averages in textbook fashion.
In January 2026, gold hit its own all-time high near $5,600. This week it trades around $4,400 — down roughly 21% from peak, but still up 30% year-to-date and 165% over three years.
Both assets get pitched with the same vocabulary: alternatives, hedges, stores of value, inflation protection. The last 12 months suggest that vocabulary is doing investors a disservice.
A Quick History of Two Asset Classes
Gold has been used as money in some form since roughly 3000 BC. The classical gold standard ran from 1870 to 1914. Bretton Woods, the post-war gold-backed dollar system, ran from 1944 to 1971. Since Nixon ended dollar convertibility in 1971, gold has compounded at roughly 8% a year over 55 years.
The most striking thing about gold’s long-term track record isn’t the returns. It’s what gold does when everything else doesn’t. In 2022 — when the S&P 500 fell 19% and the Bloomberg US Aggregate Bond Index fell 13%, the worst joint year in modern history for the classic 60/40 portfolio — gold was up 0.4%. Not exciting. But not down. That’s the whole point.
Bitcoin is 17 years old this January. Genesis block: 3 January 2009. Its history is short, but the pattern is clear. The major peak-to-trough drawdowns:
- 2014–15: roughly −85%
- 2018: roughly −83%
- 2022: roughly −77%
- 2025–26 so far: roughly −43%
These aren’t anomalies. This is just how Bitcoin moves.
Source: CoinDesk price history. Drawdowns measured peak-to-trough in USD. Gold’s largest modern drawdown over the same period was around −30%.
The Volatility Tells You Almost Everything
Forget the technical terms. Here’s the plain version: Bitcoin moves around dramatically more than gold does. Day to day, month to month, all of it.
Bitcoin is moving roughly 4× more than gold right now
As of last week, Bitcoin was moving roughly four times as much as gold on any given day. That’s not a small gap. If you hold the same dollar amount of each, Bitcoin will swing your account balance four times harder.
This doesn’t make Bitcoin a bad investment. It makes it a different kind of investment — one closer to a high-growth tech stock than to a savings vehicle. Whether that’s right for you depends on what you’re trying to do with the money.
Who’s Actually Buying — and Why
This is the part that gets less attention than it should.
Gold’s biggest buyers right now are governments. Central banks bought over 1,000 tonnes for the third consecutive year in 2024 (World Gold Council), and the pattern continued through 2025 and into 2026. On top of that, several governments are now actively building infrastructure to capture retail demand: France’s new Marianne coin launches in June, Ghana is forcing its mines to sell 30% of output to its central bank, and Malaysia and India are hiking import taxes to channel money into approved channels. When the world’s treasuries are competing with you for inventory, the floor under the price doesn’t disappear easily.
Bitcoin’s biggest buyers right now are leveraged traders. Aggregated futures positions have dropped 14% since mid-May. The May 29 monthly options expiry has a “max pain” level near $75,000 (the price at which the most options expire worthless — helpful to people who sold them, painful to people who bought). Bitcoin ETFs saw roughly $1.26 billion of outflows in six straight days late this month.
That’s why Bitcoin charts respond so cleanly to moving averages: when most of the buying is leveraged, the price moves on whatever the leverage decides to do next.
Four Practical Takeaways
1. Volatility tells you the role.
Something that moves 4x more than gold is doing something different than gold. It might also be doing it well — but it’s not a substitute. Treat it as the high-growth, high-risk position it actually is.
2. How much you own matters more than whether you own it.
Owning a little Bitcoin is reasonable for most people who want exposure to it. Owning a lot is a completely different conversation, even with the same conviction.
3. “Digital gold” was always a marketing line.
The two assets don’t act like substitutes. Bitcoin tends to sell off when high-growth tech sells off. Gold tends to hold or rise during the same periods. The October-to-now divergence is the cleanest example we’ve had in years.
4. Watch what governments do, not what they say.
Multiple major treasuries are buying physical gold. Zero are buying Bitcoin reserves.
Treasuries don’t buy assets for the same reasons traders do. Their behavior tells you something durable. That’s a data point.
The Bigger Picture
Both gold and Bitcoin will likely keep playing roles in modern portfolios. But the last 12 months have made the distinction between them clearer than at any point in Bitcoin’s history.
Gold went up 65% in 2025, hit $5,600, pulled back to $4,400, and is still trading in a range that would have seemed fantastical three years ago. The pullback is happening alongside central banks adding to reserves, governments restarting mints, and import taxes rising worldwide.
Bitcoin went up over 200% in 2024, hit $128,000, pulled back to $60,000, recovered to $90,000, and is now back below $73,000 — driven by ETF flows, options expiries, and futures positioning.
Both are real stories. They are just very different stories. And the chart of Bitcoin trading cleanly below its 50, 100, and 200-day moving averages is, in its own way, a picture worth a thousand words.
Sources: CoinDesk, BullionVault, World Gold Council, Bitfinex, Invezz, AFP, Reuters.
Cryptocurrency and precious metals both carry significant risk. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns.