After a brief five-day rally, Bitcoin once again continued its downward plunge, losing another 1% between 7 p.m. ET last night and 6 a.m. this morning. It is at $87K at the time of writing. In large part, that reflected a general risk-off attitude across global markets this morning. S&P 500 futures were down 0.19% after the index closed up 1.55% yesterday. Asia was mixed this morning and Europe followed by moving flat-to-down in early trading.
Crypto may be suffering from a significant shift in sentiment: until October 6 this year, Bitcoin and gold had moved up together, though certainly not in tandem. However, both rose on a “safe haven” narrative as stocks soared, despite worries that the tech companies driving them are fuelling an AI bubble.
Gold, by contrast, looks unstoppable. “Gold has just delivered its most extraordinary year in more than four decades. Prices surged more than 50% in 2025 so far, making it the metal’s best performance since 1979,” according to ActivTrades analyst Carolane de Palmas.
First is that the Bitcoin ETF trade has seen a sharp unwinding over the last few days. When traditional finance platforms launched Bitcoin ETFs, there was a huge influx of interest, as retail investors (who previously may not have felt confident enough to create a crypto wallet) decided to enter the market. But with the price of Bitcoin plunging over the last 30 days, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured out of those ETFs, as this chart from Deutsche shows:
For crypto investors, stablecoins (as the name suggests) offer respite from the fluctuations of Bitcoin. So the more Bitcoin declines, the more crypto investors move into stablecoins like USDT while they await a turnaround, and the more gold gets bought to back those stablecoins—pushing up the price of the yellow metal. Thus begins a spiral that widens the divergence between gold and Bitcoin over time.
Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:
