Gold Surpasses Bitcoin by Over 70% as 'Digital Gold' Fails to Impress

Over the past year, gold has outperformed its digital rival Bitcoin (BTC) by over 70 percentage points. While BTC plummeted to $65,000 from a peak of $117,000 in the same period, gold surged to $4,330 from $3,400. This marks a stark contrast to the performance of gold and BTC over the past three years, where owning digital gold instead of the real thing would have returned a couple fewer percentage points.

According to TradingView, gold (orange) has surpassed BTC (green) in value over the trailing 12 months. The precious metal achieved its own record shortly after Bitcoin's peak, hitting $5,589 per ounce on January 28, 2026, and never came close to giving up its year-over-year gain.

Evangelists have spent a decade comparing BTC to a global store of value, but the performance of gold over the past few years has certainly stalled that pitch. Michael Burry wrote in February that 'BTC has been exposed as a purely speculative asset, and is not near the debasement trade hedge that gold and other precious metals are.'

Central banks added 863 tonnes of gold to sovereign reserves in 2025, while none of those purchases flowed into BTC. Gold ETF investors also reversed course, with holdings swinging from a small net outflow in 2024 to inflows of more than 800 tonnes in 2025.