One Is Up 77%, the Other Is Down 47%. Here’s Which One Wall Street Is Picking for the Next 5 Years
Gold hit an all-time high of $5,595 in January 2026 and is up 77% over the past year, while Bitcoin is down 47% from its October 2025 peak of $126,000 and trading around $70,000.
JPMorgan argues Bitcoin is now more attractive than gold long-term because the volatility ratio between the two has dropped to a record low of 1.5, and BTC at $70,000 sits below its estimated $87,000 production cost.
Goldman Sachs raised its year-end gold target to $5,400 per ounce and points to gold’s track record of never losing more than 45% in a single drawdown compared to Bitcoin’s four drops exceeding 50% since 2017.
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Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Gold are the two most recognized store-of-value assets in the world. Both are built on the promise of holding value when everything else falls, but they are moving in completely opposite directions right now. Gold is trading near $5,200 an ounce after climbing 77% over the past year, hitting an all-time high of $5,595 in January. Bitcoin on the other hand, is at $70,000 after falling 47% from its own all-time high of $126,000 set in October 2025.
The conventional belief is that gold is the real store of value and Bitcoin is not due to its high level of volatility. But JPMorgan recently argued the opposite, saying Bitcoin’s volatility relative to gold has dropped to a record low and that BTC is now “more attractive than gold” as a long-term investment. The bank put a $266,000 long-term price target on Bitcoin, while acknowledging it might not happen anytime soon.
A year ago, gold was trading around $2,900 an ounce. Since then, central banks have been buying at a pace not seen in decades, with China’s central bank adding gold for 15 consecutive months and countries like India and Poland building reserves alongside it. By late January, gold had already surged past $5,000 and hit an all-time high of $5,595 on January 29. When the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, gold jumped another 2% in a single session, from roughly $5,100 to above $5,300, as investors piled into the one asset that has always worked during wartime.
Bitcoin was supposed to benefit from the same kind of uncertainty. It has a fixed supply of 21 million coins—meaning no central bank can print more of it—and its supporters have long called it “digital gold.” But when the Iran strikes hit on February 28, Bitcoin dropped from $66,000 to $63,000 in a single session while gold surged by over $200. Bitcoin ETFs have now bled roughly $3.8 billion in net outflows in 2026, with February alone marking the worst single month since these products launched in January 2024. Gold-backed ETFs moved in the opposite direction, with SPDR Gold Trust and iShares Gold Trust pulling in fresh capital as the war premium drove institutional demand for physical gold exposure.
Gold is up 77% over the past 12 months while Bitcoin is down 47% from its October high and roughly 25% below where it started the year. The last time gold and Bitcoin diverged this sharply was early 2020, and Bitcoin went on to rally over 1,000% in the two years that followed—JPMorgan thinks a similar setup may be forming now.
Ink Drop / Shutterstock.com ·Ink Drop / Shutterstock.com
JPMorgan’s quantitative strategist, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, argued in a February note that Bitcoin is now more attractive than gold over the long term. His reasoning is that gold has actually gotten more volatile than Bitcoin. He also points that gold’s 77% rally came with wider and more frequent price swings, while Bitcoin’s volatility has been falling—and that the ratio between the two has dropped to about 1.5, which is a record low.
If Bitcoin is now closer to gold in terms of volatility, JPMorgan argues it should also be closer in terms of how much money is invested in it. Right now, roughly $8 trillion in private sector capital sits in gold through ETFs, bars, and coins. For Bitcoin to match that level of investment, JPMorgan forecasts its price would need to reach $266,000.
On top of that, BTC is trading below its estimated production cost of $87,000—what it costs miners on average to produce one coin—and every time that’s happened in past cycles, the price eventually recovered. The bank’s own commodity team projects gold at $6,300 by year-end, which is about 21% upside from $5,200. Compare that to the 280% implied by their $266,000 Bitcoin target from current levels near $70,000, and it’s clear which asset JPMorgan thinks has more room to move.
As JPMorgan argues Bitcoin is the better bet, Goldman Sachs believes otherwise. The bank raised its year-end gold price target to $5,400 per ounce in January, which from $5,200 today still implies upside with room to run further as central banks keep buying. Goldman’s reasoning is that central banks are still buying gold at a pace not seen in decades and that gold doesn’t need Bitcoin-style volatility to deliver strong returns.
Gold has also never lost more than 45% of its value in a single drawdown, while Bitcoin has dropped over 50% four times since 2017. For Goldman, the consistency is what makes gold a safer long-term hold compared to BTC.
Bitcoin has more room to run from $70,000 than gold does from $5,200, but you’d have to hold through 40-50% drawdowns to get there. Gold doesn’t ask that of you. The thing is, gold has sharply outperformed Bitcoin before, in 2015 and again in early 2020, and both times Bitcoin eventually caught up and blew past it—and the same type of gap is forming now.
Moreso, Bitcoin now has an institutional foundation that didn’t exist during previous drawdowns, with spot ETFs holding over $100 billion in assets and Strategy alone sitting on 738,000 BTC. If the institutional floor is strong enough to drive a recovery once the macro pressure eases, buying Bitcoin at $70,000 with JPMorgan’s $266,000 long-term target on the table could end up being one of the better entry points of this cycle. If not, gold at $5,200 with JPMorgan projecting $6,300 to $8,000 and central banks still loading up was the right call all along.
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