Cathie Wood sees Bitcoin gaining ground against gold. Its relative strength depends on more than the metal’s recent decline.
Key Takeaways
- Wood sees Bitcoin gaining ground against gold.
- Outperformance does not always mean dollar gains.
- A gold rebound would test Bitcoin’s lead.
Discussing a chart in ARK Invest’s “In The Know” video, Wood noted that Bitcoin was rising while gold was falling. She described the improving Bitcoin-to-gold ratio as a turn in Bitcoin’s favour:
So we do think the turn is in here for Bitcoin.
Bitcoin can beat gold without rising in dollars
The ratio divides Bitcoin’s dollar price by gold’s dollar price per troy ounce, showing how many ounces one Bitcoin could buy. It rises when Bitcoin appreciates faster than gold, but it can also improve because gold falls while Bitcoin holds its price.
A rising ratio therefore does not guarantee a dollar profit. Bitcoin can lose value and still outperform gold if the metal falls further. The difference becomes clear when the two price changes are calculated together:
The period being measured matters too. Bitcoin trades through weekends, while conventional gold markets have different trading hours. Comparing prices from matching timestamps avoids treating a Bitcoin move against an older gold quote as simultaneous outperformance. A few days of improvement can also look different from a comparison covering several months.
Wood cited ARK research covering the period since 2019 that put Bitcoin’s correlation with gold around 0.1, and said the relationship had recently been negative. The low figure describes a weak relationship in the measure she referenced; it does not identify which asset earns higher returns. Bitcoin’s “digital gold” label describes a store-of-value argument, without requiring its price to follow gold.
Gold has fallen, but it still has sources of demand
Gold’s late-September decline provides a separate market backdrop. Reuters reported that the metal fell roughly 4% on September 28 as a stronger dollar, rising Treasury yields and expectations of tighter monetary policy weighed on prices. It then recovered some ground the following day.
The retreat shows how weakness in gold can improve Bitcoin’s relative position without a comparable increase in Bitcoin’s price. It does not independently establish the size or duration of the turn Wood described, which would require comparing both assets over the period shown in her chart.
Gold’s demand also extends beyond expectations for the dollar and interest rates. In its July outlook for the rest of 2026, the World Gold Council identified reserve diversification as a reason for continued central bank buying. It also described geopolitical uncertainty as a support for investment demand. Those sources of demand could help gold withstand pressure from a stronger dollar.
Where the dollar fits into Wood’s argument
Wood expects technology-led investment to support the U.S. dollar while productivity gains reduce inflation. Her expectation of dollar strength helps explain why she sees further pressure on gold. Quoting Bitcoin and gold in the same currency makes their prices comparable, but does not remove the dollar’s economic influence on either market.
Raoul Pal focuses on another outcome. In our coverage of his Bitcoin outlook and the dollar, he looks for dollar weakness to help support a sustained crypto recovery. His financing argument concerns conditions for a longer Bitcoin advance; Wood’s comparison concerns how Bitcoin performs against gold. Relative gains can occur even when conditions remain difficult for a rally in dollars.
Bitcoin’s lead needs to survive a gold recovery
If Bitcoin retains its relative gains while gold recovers, its advantage would be harder to explain through weakness in the metal alone. That would provide stronger evidence of Bitcoin’s own price strength than a ratio that improves mainly during gold sell-offs.
Buying data could help assess that strength. Persistent net inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs would show demand through one identifiable channel, although they would not capture every buyer. A rising ratio by itself cannot establish investors selling gold to purchase Bitcoin; evidence of that rotation would have to come from their transactions or allocations.
If gold rebounds faster than Bitcoin and the ratio falls back, the turn Wood identified would look less durable. Bitcoin could still rise in dollars during that period, but it would be losing purchasing power against gold. That would weaken her relative-performance call without necessarily ending Bitcoin’s dollar-price recovery.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Market relationships can change, and past performance does not guarantee future returns.
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets – crypto first, then everything else.
It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn’t fully understand it – so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can’t properly understand one without the other.
What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it’s happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline – price up, price down, here’s a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn?
He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University – not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That’s probably why he hasn’t stopped.
Be the first to comment