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Bitcoin may be staging the biggest challenge yet to gold and silver
Is bitcoin knocking some of the shine off gold?
By MARK DECAMBRE
MarketWatch
Bitcoin’s break above $7,300 on Thursday comes as gold futures have made curious moves, mostly trading sideways, despite weakness in the currency that underpins it—the U.S. dollar—and a downturn in bond yields. That raises a key question: Is the world’s No. 1 digital currency luring away traditional investors in gold, which boasts an unrivaled history as a store of value.
Some commodity experts think there may be some merit to that idea—at least in the near term.
“Bitcoin is preventing gold prices from a rise,” Chintan Karnani, chief market analyst at Insignia Consultants in New Delhi told MarketWatch.
A single bitcoin BTCUSD, +11.28% on Thursday hit a record above $7,355, translating to a nearly 650% year-to-date rally for the cryptographic unit. Meanwhile, gold futures GCZ7, +0.61% have seen muted trading, settling up less than a $1 at $1,278.10 an ounce, despite 10-year Treasury note yields TMUBMUSD10Y, +0.00% slipping to 2.344%, compared with 2.378% on Wednesday. The dollar, as measured by the ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, +0.03% also weakened against a basket of rivals, down about 0.1%.
Gold, which is priced in dollars, tends to move inversely to the greenback, and usually climbs when rates fall, because the commodity doesn’t bear a yield. The yellow metal has mostly traded in a narrow range over the past few sessions, and is flat over the past three months, according to FactSet data. By comparison, bitcoin over the same period has surged 155%, picking up nearly $4,500.
“Short-term investors are investing in bitcoin,” Karnani said, based on his conversations with clients and other industry participants. However, he expected profits from bitcoin to be invested in gold for the long term.
“Bitcoin is yet to catch up in a big way in India, China or Asia. Asians are buying gold,” Karnani said.
Some digital currency participants also see gold being outshined by bitcoin.
“I think there is a direct correlation between the historic surge of bitcoin this month and gold’s recent flatline,” said Perry Woodin CEO at Node40, which offers blockchain-related services and digital currency accounting services.
“The move from gold is also a sign that investors are seeing more value in assets that can be used in everyday situations. You can buy a lot with bitcoin now; it’s much more difficult with gold,” he argues.
To be sure, gold is wrestling with a number of other factors that have stunted its recent ascent, including a rally in global equities that has taken the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.11% the S&P 500 index SPX, -0.05% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, -0.08% to repeated all-time highs. Still, gold is up about 11% so far in 2017.
Charles Hayter, co-founder of CryptoCompare, said bitcoin has taken strides to increase its legitimacy, with the CME Group CME, -1.26% earlier this week announcing that it planned on offering futures contracts pegged to bitcoin before the end of the year.
“This is bitcoin crossing the divide from the Wild West of finance to the mainstream,” he said of the CME announcement.
“Futures from an incumbent exchange bring bitcoin and cryptocurrencies into the regulatory fold. This allows more complex financial products to be created and will eventually open the doors to institutional money,” he said.
Adrian Ash, head of research at BullionVault, said it isn’t gold that has taken a ding from bitcoin’s climb, but instead silver futures SIZ7, +1.04%
Ash, ,in a recent blog post, said that “silver investment demand has sunk as bitcoin has swamped financial headlines, blogs, clickbait and junk mail this year.
“Demand for newly minted silver coins has sunk 40% and worse so far this year from last,” he said. Silver futures are up 7% so far in 2017.
Ash believes that central banks, which put in place easy-money policies to help limit the impact of the 2007—09 global financial crisis, may contribute to a loss of faith in traditional monetary systems. He thinks physical gold and silver will be the beneficiary of that period, when and if it arrives.
Bitcoin’s rally, of course, has drawn heavy criticism, with investors warning that it carries all the hallmarks of a classic asset bubble. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. boss Jamie Dimon has been one of the harsher critics of bitcoin and the broader digital-currency sector, declaring the units as a fraud that will eventually blow up.
Credit Suisse Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam on Thursday described bitcoin as the “very definition of a bubble.”
Fear of a bubble is often cited as an argument against bitcoin displacing assets perceived as havens like gold.
“Bitcoin is still a high volatility, high risk investment for [traditional] institutions,” said Taulant Ramabaja, chief technology officer at ULedger, a blockchain-infrastructure company. He doubts bitcoin is drawing any real bids away from gold for those reasons.
However, that could change if institutional investors grow more comfortable with bitcoin. “That said, this might become the case in 2-3 years, once sufficient regulation and exchange infrastructure is build around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for large institutions to interact with it,” he said.
If bitcoin implodes as some predict, however, it is gold and silver that are likely to reassert their traditional dominance.