Gold and bitcoin have diverged sharply in recent years. Drawing on a 12-year data set, the source article argues that gold and silver outperformed bitcoin over the last one to two years, while bitcoin remained the clear winner over the full long-term window. The piece says bitcoin generated returns about 65 times greater than gold over that longer period, with a total gain of roughly 213x.
Recent underperformance did not erase bitcoin’s long-term lead
The article points to several market phases to show how different the two assets behave. In the early 2020 pandemic shock, gold and silver rose on safe-haven demand while bitcoin briefly fell more than 30% before rebounding. In 2017, bitcoin surged 1359% and gold rose 7%. In 2018, bitcoin dropped 63% while gold fell 5%. In 2022, bitcoin lost 57% and gold posted a slight 1% gain. The takeaway is simple: their price relationship has never been stable.
Central bank buying and industrial demand helped precious metals
One major reason given for gold’s strength is official-sector demand. The article says global central banks were net buyers of gold for three straight years from 2022 to 2024, averaging more than 1,000 tons annually. That buying, in the author’s view, reinforced gold’s status as a reserve asset. Silver had another tailwind. The piece links its move to demand from new energy industries, AI data centers, and solar manufacturing, framing silver as both a precious metal and an industrial input.
Bitcoin is trading more like a leveraged tech proxy
The article argues bitcoin is still treated mainly as a risk asset, not as a true safe haven. After ETF approvals and wider institutional participation, its market structure changed. According to the piece, bitcoin’s correlation with U.S. technology stocks climbed to 0.8 in the second half of 2025. That level of linkage suggests investors increasingly view it as a high-beta growth trade. The article also cites a October 10, 2025 sell-off in which roughly $19 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated, presenting it as evidence that bitcoin did not hold up like a defensive asset under stress.
The “digital gold” label still lacks consistent support in the data
To challenge the digital-gold narrative, the piece revisits several historical episodes. During the 2013 Cyprus banking crisis, gold fell about 15% from its highs while bitcoin rose above $1,000. Monthly return correlation that year was only 0.08, close to zero. During the liquidity-heavy period after the pandemic, gold broke above $2,000 in August 2020, bitcoin moved past $20,000 later that year, and then traded above $60,000 in 2021. Even so, the article stresses that bitcoin’s annualized volatility was about 72%, compared with 16% for gold.
The article’s conclusion: different jobs inside a portfolio
The source does not frame gold and bitcoin as direct substitutes. It places them in different roles. Gold is presented as a store-of-value and hedging asset, with volatility near 16% and maximum drawdown around -18%. Bitcoin is described as a return-seeking asset with annualized returns of about 60.6%, but with volatility at 72% and maximum drawdown reaching -76%. In the article’s framing, gold acts as the shield, while bitcoin remains the spear.