Gold Surges To Record High As Bitcoin Stumbles In Safe-Haven Showdown

Gold surged to a record high as Bitcoin plunged, damaging the crypto’s safe-haven credentials amid market jitters over US regional banks.

Gold is trading up 0.56% in the past 24 hours at $4,315.21 as of 7:50 a.m. EST, a fraction below the all-time high of $4,379.93 it set earlier in the day.

Bitcoin, by comparison, has plunged 5.5% to trade at $105,758 amid market concerns that loan issues at several US regional banks may signal underlying systemic risks.

”Bitcoin has failed the test as a viable alternative to the U.S. dollar or digital gold,” said Bitcoin bear Peter Schiff on X. ”HODLers are in denial and their refusal to accept reality will cost them dearly.’

Gold Market Cap Soars Past $30 Trillion, More Valuable Than Mag 7 Tech Giants

The surging gold price sent the precious metal’s market cap past $30 trillion, making it the first asset to achieve such a lofty milestone.

Top assets by market cap (Source: CompaniesMarketCap)

The commodity’s market cap is now 14.5x greater than that Bitcoin’s, which stands at $2.1 trillion. Gold’s market cap is also 1.5 times larger than the capitalization of the “Magnificent 7” largest technology companies Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Tesla. Together, they have a market cap of about $20 trillion.

Analysts Divided On Whether Bitcoin Will Close The Gap

Gold’s surge while BTC drops has re-ignited debate over whether Bitcoin can serve as a safe-haven asset.

Influential crypto trader Michael van de Poppe highlighted the “mispricing” between gold and Bitcoin in a post on X to his over 811.7K followers.

He said that gold is currently in a “euphoria” stage, predicting that capital will soon flow into BTC. He predicted that Bitcoin will reach $1 million per coin in the next 1-2 years. 

Pseudonymous analyst “Ash Crypto” echoed a similar sentiment, and predicted that “trillions are coming into [the] crypto market and we will see the biggest bull run ever.” 

‘Buy The Real Thing’

But Schiff says investors should ”buy the real thing” and that “gold is eating Bitcoin’s lunch.”

“Bitcoin is now down 32% priced in gold since its August high,” he wrote, adding that “this Bitcoin bear market will be brutal.” 

On van de Poppe’s prediction that BTC will soar to $1 million, Schiff said that “gold is more likely to hit $1 million than Bitcoin.” 

Still, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, replied sarcastically to Schiff’s post on X, pointing out that Bitcoin had soared from $0.004 to $110k in 16 years and that Schiff’s criticisms of Bitcoin are right ”about 1% of the time.”