Only time stands between Bitcoin and gold’s price rally.
While gold has surged 60% this year to over $4,350 per ounce, Bitcoin has been stuck in neutral. The top crypto is up just 15% in 2025, and has fallen 10% in recent weeks as trade tensions flared up between the US and China.
The divergence is brutal. Gold keeps hitting fresh all-time highs while Bitcoin seemingly can’t hold on to $110,000 — despite a recent record of $126,000.
For investors who bought into the “digital gold” narrative, watching the precious metal lap Bitcoin has been painful.
But there’s a twist, say market watchers.
“Don’t look at gold’s meteoric rise with envy. Look at it with anticipation,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, wrote in an October 21 note to investors. “It could end up showing us where Bitcoin is headed.”
The pattern matters because gold’s 2025 surge didn’t happen overnight.
Central banks started buying aggressively in 2022, but prices crept up slowly for three years before going parabolic. Bitcoin’s institutional buying spree, meanwhile, mostly kicked off in 2024.
If the same delayed explosion pattern holds, Bitcoin may not be lagging behind gold for much longer.
How high can Bitcoin go? Depends on who you ask. Arthur Hayes, Bernstein, and Standard Chartered have all called for a $200,000 Bitcoin price tag. Others, like 10xResearch, aren’t sold. They said it’s a coin toss that Bitcoin even tops $140,000 by the end of the year.