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š³ Daily Edition: Bitcoin vs. Gold Gap Widens, Has Physical Gold Won?
The digital gold narrative isn't failing, it's just a bit of a misnomer
Beluga & Will McKinnon
February 18, 2026
In partnership with
At time of writing Bitcoin is trading under $67k as a recovery attempt to $70k earlier in the week fell short. Making matters worse for the Digital Gold bulls, physical Gold looks like it wants to climb back over $5k/oz, representing a +50% gain in the last 6 months alone. Pursuant to recent conversations Iāve had as well as the widening divide between the two assetsā prices, I thought this would be a good time to revisit the Bitcoin thesis and why we started calling it āDigital Goldā in the first place.
Bitcoin is uncensorable, peer-to-peer, and programmatically scarce with a maximum supply of 21 million coins. There is no central governing body, and nobody can move your Bitcoins except you (provided you keep your seed phrase safe of course). These characteristics led people to view BTC in a similar way to Gold, but its important to remember why these two are different, especially in light of tokenized Gold gaining some major volume.
24 Hour Crypto Heatmap, Source: CoinMarketCap
Gold has quite literally thousands of years of pricing history to inform buyers, along with physical use-cases which give it intrinsic value. It also now has the backing of central banks, sovereign funds, and the biggest companies in the world. For all these reasons, we should expect Bitcoinās path to be much smoother and predictable. Conversely, Bitcoin is pretty new still, even if a year in crypto may feel like 10 in the real world. There is real risk associated with its future including quantum vulnerabilities, its pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto, and getting the big boys like central banks on board.
The digital gold narrative isnāt dead or dying, itās just a bit of a misnomer. The future is bright, but there might be some turbulence on the way there.
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