BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF IBIT has outperformed the world’s largest gold ETF, GLD, by 33 percentage points since March, according to Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas. He posted a comparison chart on X and said the table had “flipped,” pointing to a sharp reversal in relative performance between Bitcoin and gold.
The fund flow data was just as striking. Over the same period, IBIT pulled in $4.2 billion in new money, while GLD saw $9 billion in outflows. Taken together, that amounts to a $13 billion swing between the two products. The numbers suggest that allocation preferences have shifted in a visible way, not just price action.
Performance gap and capital flows both favored Bitcoin
The comparison adds weight to the long-running “digital gold” versus physical gold debate. Based on the source material, Bitcoin has shown strong price resilience this year, and money on Wall Street has been moving faster into spot Bitcoin ETFs. The 33-point return gap captures one side of the story. The flow picture makes the rotation much harder to ignore.
In ETF markets, creations and redemptions often reveal conviction more clearly than short-term market moves. Fresh demand into IBIT and heavy withdrawals from GLD point to a split in investor positioning. Some institutional and retail investors appear to be reducing gold exposure and increasing Bitcoin allocations at the same time. That is what the swing figure puts into numbers.
Balchunas used a college football rivalry to frame the shift
Balchunas described the reversal with a college football analogy, comparing it to Ohio State beating Michigan and silencing a large group of rival fans. The comment was colorful, but it also captured the mood change around the trade.
Gold supporters have long argued that Bitcoin lacks physical backing and carries too much volatility. For the period starting in March, the figures cited by Balchunas show IBIT ahead of GLD on both returns and fund flows. The source does not provide a longer historical window, but for this stretch, the move out of gold and into Bitcoin ETFs was substantial and measurable.