Gold has performed better than Bitcoin this year

This year, the crypto sector has faced a particularly humiliating comparison: the price of real gold against that of its primary digital competitor. Since the start of the year, gold has surged by 23%, while Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a drop of 12%.

Gold's impressive performance is significant in its own right and stands out due to the sheer scale of its market. With an estimated $21 trillion in mined gold compared to just $1.6 trillion in mined BTC, the disparity is striking.

Bitcoin is down by nearly 3% over the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows.

And over the past month, the picture is even bleaker: assets have nosedived by more than 15%.

Gold enthusiast and economist Peter Schiff was quick to react to the developments in the markets. A well-known critic of Bitcoin, Schiff, posted on X that gold was not rising due to uncertainty but due to a loss of confidence in the USD and the certainty that inflation will be much higher than 2%. Schiff also highlighted the decline in the value of stocks, bonds, and Bitcoin amid a gold rally.

While the exact market capitalization of gold may vary, it’s indisputable that shifting its price requires a substantially larger amount of wealth than what is needed to impact the price of BTC.

Bitcoin's price has in the past moved in line with gold. During the banking crisis of 2023, the biggest cryptocurrency's correlation with tech stocks dropped, and it began to align more with the precious metal as investors sought refuge in stable assets.