Gold’s Moment Is Fading. Bitcoin’s May Be Just Beginning

For most of the past twelve months, the question in macro markets has been simple: why isn’t Bitcoin keeping up with gold? The answer, it turns out, may tell us more about what comes next than about what has already happened.

Gold surged 65% in 2025, according to Fidelity Digital Assets research — the fourth-largest annual gain since the end of the gold standard, rivalling the great inflation rallies of the 1970s. The metal hit a new all-time high of around $5,608 in January 2026. Bitcoin, by contrast, is trading near $70,000, down roughly 44% from its October all-time high of $126,000. The divergence has stoked debate about whether Bitcoin’s “digital gold” thesis is broken — and drawn in some of the sharpest macro minds in the world, who increasingly think the debate has been framed backwards.

The Pendulum Argument

Macroeconomist Lyn Alden is among the most prominent voices arguing the current gap between the two assets is not a refutation of Bitcoin, but a setup for its next run. “If I had to bet Bitcoin versus gold over the next two to three years, I would bet Bitcoin,” Alden said on the New Era Finance podcast this week. “Gun to my head, if I had to say which one I think outperforms, I would say Bitcoin.”

Her reasoning follows a pattern both assets have displayed across multiple cycles. “It’s usually a pendulum between the two,” she explained. “If gold has gone up as much as it did, the entire diminishing return story per cycle is going to be erased in the coming one, too.” Alden acknowledged that gold is seeing what she described as “somewhat euphoric” sentiment right now, while Bitcoin is being treated “somewhat unfairly negative.” That asymmetry in sentiment, she suggested, is exactly where opportunities tend to emerge.

Fidelity Digital Assets analyst Chris Kuiper reached a similar conclusion in the firm’s 2026 Look Ahead report, noting that gold’s 65% return in 2025 was a historically rare event: “Historically, gold and bitcoin have taken turns outperforming. With gold shining in 2025, it would not be surprising if bitcoin takes the lead next.” Kuiper also observed that both assets can benefit simultaneously from the same macro backdrop — persistent fiscal deficits, trade tensions, and geopolitical uncertainty — as investors seek stores of value outside the traditional financial system.

Bitcoin Vs Gold price changes, source: Longtermtrends

The ETF Flow Signal

The first concrete evidence of a shift is starting to show up in fund flows. The largest US gold-backed ETF, GLD, recorded a $3 billion outflow on Wednesday, according to the Kobeissi Letter — the largest single-day withdrawal in more than two years, following a 4.4% decline in gold prices. The move follows what had been an extraordinary run: gold ETFs attracted $18.7 billion in January and another $5.3 billion in February, the strongest two-month start to a year on record.

Bitcoin ETF flows moved in the opposite direction. The 30-day net flow shifted to a $273 million inflow on March 6 from a $1.9 billion outflow on February 6. Bitcoin ETF balances increased by a net 4,021 BTC over the same period, while gold ETF holdings declined from 1.4 million ounces to 621,100 ounces.

Joe Consorti, head of growth at Horizon, summarised the emerging dynamic: “Gold is stalling out while bitcoin is soaring. BTC is set to overtake gold’s percentage growth over the last month as the US economy accelerates and risk sentiment improves. The anticipated risk-off to risk-on rotation could be underway.”

Whether that rotation will prove durable is a harder question. Historically, according to Cointelegraph analysis, Bitcoin needed roughly 147 days — about 21 weeks — to establish a sustained outperformance trend over gold after its 2022 bottom. The current BTC-to-gold ratio trades near the same consolidation zone seen in those earlier rotation phases.

Hayes Wants to Wait

Not everyone is ready to declare the rotation underway. Arthur Hayes, the BitMEX co-founder who has maintained a $250,000 year-end Bitcoin price target, told the Coin Stories podcast this week that he would hold off buying for now. “If I had $1 to invest right now, would I be putting it into Bitcoin? No. I would wait,” Hayes said. The reasoning isn’t bearish on Bitcoin — it’s bearish on the timing. Hayes is watching the Federal Reserve. “That’s when I’m going to buy Bitcoin,” he said, “when the central banks start printing money.”

His view is that the Middle East conflict has created a macro environment that could push Bitcoin lower before it goes higher. “The longer this conflict goes on, the higher the likelihood that the Fed has to print money to support the American war machine,” Hayes said — and it is that eventual policy pivot, not the war itself, that will be the signal to buy. Hayes warned Bitcoin could fall below $60,000 if geopolitical tensions trigger a broader equity sell-off and cascading liquidations. “War is good for Bitcoin” is the wrong framing, he argued: “Money printing is good for Bitcoin.”

The Macro Architecture

The deeper case for both gold and Bitcoin rests on the same structural foundation: a US debt burden that has grown beyond any realistic path of conventional repayment. Fidelity’s 2026 Look Ahead puts the US national debt at more than $38 trillion, with a debt-to-GDP ratio of roughly 125% — up from 56% in 2000. Interest payments on that debt now consume nearly $1 trillion annually, making them the third-largest budget line item in the federal government. Fidelity’s research team notes a tight historical correlation between Bitcoin and global M2 money supply: when M2 expands — through lower rates, quantitative easing, or fiscal spending — scarce assets like Bitcoin have consistently benefited, acting in Fidelity’s words as a “liquidity sponge.”

As Brave New Coin has documented in its analysis of the Bitcoin safe-haven debate, the two assets respond differently to different kinds of stress. Gold excels during acute, short-duration shocks. Bitcoin tends to follow liquidity cycles over a longer horizon — which is precisely the mechanism Hayes and Alden are pointing to. BraveNewCoin’s tracking of gold’s record-breaking 2025 performance documented how the metal’s 65% gain was driven as much by central bank buying and de-dollarisation as by inflation fears — a set of structural forces that Fidelity argues also favours Bitcoin over the medium term.

What both camps agree on is that the macro environment — persistent deficits, geopolitical fracture, and the long unwinding of a forty-year bond bull market — is precisely the kind of environment in which holding something outside the traditional financial system makes sense. The argument is not gold versus Bitcoin. It is gold and Bitcoin, in sequence, driven by the same tectonic forces. The question is simply: which one’s turn is it?

Based on the data building this week, the pendulum may be starting to swing. Should you buy Bitcoin today? The smart money says yes.