18th April 2025 > > BTC vs gold.

tl;dr

Two variants on an analysis of BTC and gold’s historic and recent price performance.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Back in the boring zone it seems though the words and actions of central banks in China (promising monetary stimulus) and in the EU (seventh successive rate cut – why not just do it all at once?) suggest to me that much looser conditions are heading our way soon.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Not one for the ETH deniers

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – BTC vs gold

There have been attempts in the past to portray BTC as “digital gold”, which I always felt was a little over-ambitious. After all, gold has been around for millennia, with a tried and trusted history of always being accepted in exchange for water, food, and security. BTC has only been around for just over a decade, and however much we all understand and appreciate the beneficially transforming impact of the concept of decentralisation, I would not claim we are fully battle-tested by any means. Cryptos are here to stay, and BTC is the daddy of them all, but it isn’t fanciful to recognise that there is a risk that perhaps one day BTC is superseded by a competitor.

Gold has many drawbacks. It is hard to break down into smaller pieces, it is heavy to transport, and security measures to keep your gold safe should be delegated to trusted third parties except for your jewellery. BTC is divisible down to a Satoshi (there are 100mm SATS per BTC at less than $0.0009c each), your Ledger Nano weighs grams at most, and competent self-custody is safer than any other form of custody known to humankind.

When the zombie apocalypse engulfs us, the lack of electricity and internet will render cryptos redundant. Meanwhile, holders of gold are in a much worse position, for they would soon be relieved of their gold stash whilst also likely suffering a long and painful death from the roaming bandits.

…

Gold has been on a tear of late, taking impetus from the fear and uncertainty created by Trump’s Tariff Wars, and the expectation of significant dollar devaluation in the future. Reports of fresh new all-time highs garners media attention – just yesterday a new record was set at $3,357 per ounce. 1-0 to the crypto-denying gold bugs such as Peter Schiff you might think.

Well, not so much:

Not forgetting that correlation is not causation, I still find this graph relatively compelling. Of course, I look at it with my biased view that new BTC ATH’s are always on the horizon. Joe Consorti had this to say about this graphic:

“Bitcoin follows gold with a ~100 to 150-day lag. When the printer roars to life, gold sniffs it out first, then bitcoin follows harder.”

If it turns out that my short-term scepticism about the digital gold narrative is misplaced, I will be delighted.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – BTC vs gold part II

The latest missive from Glassnode touches upon this subject too:

https://insights.glassnode.com/the-week-onchain-week-15-2025/

In their usual and productive concise manner, the Glassnode analysts summarise the problems seen in the bond markets, the disruption to equity markets (which are normally negatively correlated with one another), and impact upon the gold market and BTC.

I am not going to spoon feed you all the details, for you can easily read them for yourselves. But with my internal biases to the fore once more, I will quote to you the important conclusion:

“Notably, the performance of both Bitcoin and Gold in particular have remained remarkably robust across this challenging period. One could consider this a fascinating signal as the foundations of the financial system enter a period of transition and change.”