Gold is at the moment buying and selling at $4,906/oz as macro desks hold paying for convexity within the oldest hedge, whereas Bitcoin is buying and selling at $72,639 after a bounce to $78,376. Similar tape. Completely different bid.
Gold Flows Inform the Story
The “receipt” for gold’s new regime sits in movement math, not slogans. World Gold Council knowledge for full-year 2025 exhibits international gold ETF holdings of +801 tonnes (second-strongest 12 months on document) and This autumn ETF inflows of 175 tonnes, alongside This autumn bar-and-coin demand of 420 tonnes, the strongest This autumn in 12 years.
Within the U.S., WGC experiences U.S. gold demand of 679 tonnes in 2025 (+140% y/y) and U.S. gold-backed ETF demand of 437 tonnes, bringing holdings to 2,019 tonnes (about $280bn in AUM as of Dec. 31, 2025). That’s often called allocation-scale shopping for.
JP Morgan pushed the ahead curve increased, as a Reuters-reported observe set a $6,300/oz goal for end-2026 and penciled in 800 tonnes of central-bank shopping for for 2026.
JPMorgan predicts gold will surge to $6,300 per ounce by year-end. Analyst Gregory Shearer stays bullish, citing strong demand from central banks. https://t.co/YFCCFq9K5O
— Enterprise Insider (@BusinessInsider) February 2, 2026
Positioning mechanics have additionally amplified the transfer. CME raised margin necessities for Comex gold futures to eight% from 6% for non-heightened threat profiles (and to eight.8% from 6.6% for heightened-risk), with silver margins to fifteen% from 11%, tightening the noose on leveraged metals books after violent each day ranges.
Bitcoin didn’t print the identical “pressured purchaser” profile on this drawdown. CoinMarketCap’s tape exhibits BTC remains to be ~40% beneath its ATH of $126,198, which retains systematic vol-control and risk-parity fashion sizing mechanically smaller than in development regimes. The market cleared threat by promoting what trades like a high-beta liquidity proxy.
How Desks Deal with Gold vs. Bitcoin
A gold bid backed by ETF balance-sheet absorption (801t in 2025) and central-bank movement expectations (800t in 2026) trades by way of price scares and margin hikes as a result of allocators can common in with low monitoring error towards benchmarks.
Bitcoin’s “hedge” bid behaves like a risk-budget stock on desks that fund it by way of liquidity. When margins rise, actual yields reprice, or fairness vol spikes, these desks lower BTC first as a result of BTC sizing keys off VAR, not a quarterly asset-allocation committee memo.
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