Gold ETFs Winning the Asset Race With Bitcoin Funds–for Now

Gold exchange-traded funds in the U.S. are leading in assets under management again after briefly being dethroned by the new American Bitcoin ETFs, a result of the traditional risk-off asset’s surge to a record high and BTC’s recent slump.

American ETFs giving investors exposure to gold’s price are collectively managing close to $150 billion in assets, VettaFi data shows. The 11 Bitcoin ETFs—approved by the SEC last year—now have over $93 billion in managed assets.

In December, Bitcoin ETFs briefly overtook their gold counterparts, according to K33 Research, thanks to the cryptocurrency’s price increase following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose policies were widely expected to boost the digital asset industry.

Bitcoin spiked to an all-time high at nearly $109,000 in January the day of his inauguration. But it has steadily lost ground and was recently trading around $84,000, down about 25% from that record.

Friday’s BTC price comes the precious metal hit a record of $3,014 per ounce as investors spooked by the new president’s trade war look for less volatile investments. Gold is a traditional safe-haven asset favored during periods of economic turbulence.

Bitcoin has largely traded similar to tech stocks and other risk-on assets over the past year.

“Bitcoin has some safe haven qualities, but lately it’s behaved more like a risk asset, and that’s why we’ve seen more outflows in those spot ETFs,” etf.com’s Senior Content Editor Kent Thune, who oversees research at the publication, told Decrypt, noting gold’s status as an inflation hedge and safe-haven investment in the “current environment.”

The new Bitcoin ETFs smashed expectations last year following their approval after new capital from investors previously locked out of the world of crypto investing flooded the market. The funds collectively breached $3 billion in net flows just one month after they started trading—beating the launch of the gold ETFs 20 years ago.

But macroeconomic uncertainties and traders concerned about Trump’s policies, including his tariffs on favored trading partners, have led to massive outflows this year, helping push the price of Bitcoin down.

Still, this trend could soon be reversed, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said, as Bitcoin is the real “hot sauce.”

“It’s not really a reflection of customer interest,” he said, adding gold catching up with Bitcoin again was simply down to “the market.”

“Most regular people want stocks and bonds and spice—they want real speculative stuff. So to me, gold isn’t hot sauce, and the fact that Bitcoin could act as hot sauce made it still a lot better over the past year than gold, even though gold is going up.”

“I just think that gold can never be hot sauce,” he said, adding that while gold has won the battle, Bitcoin could win the war in the medium- to long-term.

Edited by James Rubin

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