Comparisons between bitcoin and gold have been made since the early days of the crypto asset’s existence. Satoshi Nakamoto once compared his creation to a base metal like gold that could be instantly transported anywhere in the world, and that of fellow cypherpunk Nick Szabo the precursor to Bitcoin was literally called Bit Gold.
The “digital gold” narrative around bitcoin grew stronger in 2017, as resolution of the Bitcoin network block size war shed light on the use case for Bitcoin’s store of valueand payment-focused use cases ultimately shifted primarily towards the stablecoin model, which is now a key area of contention in crypto because of his high degree of centralization. Although there have been efforts to expand bitcoin-denominated payments on secondary protocol layers like Lightning Network and ArkThe reality is that most people are only interested in Bitcoin as a sort of long-term digital savings account, at least for now.
As a new competitor in the safe haven asset market, it was assumed that bitcoin would be the “fastest horse in the race” of a possible move away from government bonds in favor of various inflation hedges. However, this has not been the case, as gold has massively outperformed bitcoin over the last year. In fact, gold has now outperformed bitcoin over the last five years, which has never happened before.
Gold and silver together have reached the equivalent of 15 entire bitcoins in market capitalization over the past 12 months. unfailing victory for the baby boomers. pic.twitter.com/UFszL7uny1
– nic carter (@nic_carter) January 29, 2026
The last few days have been particularly crazy, as gold has been able to add more than double the total market cap of Bitcoin compared to its total market valuation in 72 hours. Gold added $3.5 trillion to its market cap during this period, while bitcoin’s market cap currently sits at around $1.67 trillion.
Gold also saw a sharp crash of almost 10% on Thursday before returning to around the $5,350 level, sparking comparisons of how Bitcoin can fluctuate wildly on a daily basis. This could be due to the curse of crypto exchanges getting involved in the trendy asset class of the moment. Sometimes a hug people like Coinbase can be a major major signal, as was the case when the crypto exchange launched its own NFT marketplace in 2022.
Stablecoin issuer Tether also made headlines this week for revealing its $24 billion gold stash, making it the largest known holder of precious metals outside of central banks and traditional financial institutions. Despite these massive holdings, Tether still struggles to gain the respect of traditional finance, receive the lowest possible score from S&P Global’s stablecoin rating framework at the end of last year.
When it comes to the reasoning behind gold’s outperformance over bitcoin, theories range from concerns related to quantum computers has greater relative interest in gold versus bitcoin from central banks (not that nation-state interest in bitcoin is completely non-existent). Notably, China is a major buyer of goldwhile the US is more interested in using Bitcoin and crypto to strengthen its economic domination.
In 2017, at its peak at nearly $20,000, Bitcoin was worth 14.25 ounces of gold. Today it is worth 16 ounces. This represents a gain of 12% in nine years. Was it worth the risk of beating gold by just 1.3% per year? HODLers will find out the hard way as Bitcoin crashes and gold continues to soar.
-Peter Schiff (@PeterSchiff) January 29, 2026
Despite the long-touted theory that bitcoin can act as a safe haven in times of global economic crisis, it has not done so thus far, as was recently demonstrated during the tensions around Greenland.
While it is it is unclear whether Bitcoin is currently at the end of another four-year cycleThis recent outperformance of gold has given some Bitcoin holders the idea that the crypto asset is still in its infancy. gold simply increases the size of bitcoin’s total addressable market. Of course, others say the recent price movements are simply proof that the future of apolitical value storage still belongs to the precious metal it was considered money for thousands of years.
