Is bitcoin really digital gold? It’s failed to answer that question

Bitcoin’s sharp pullback from its recent record high wiped out its year-to-date gains, and that’s led to questions about aggressive price targets for the cryptocurrency into 2026. But as important as where bitcoin’s price goes next is a question about the role bitcoin really serves in a portfolio: When will it consistently behave like a store of value?

“It’s still going to have to prove itself as that digital store value over a longer period of time,” Nate Geraci, NovaDius Wealth Management president, said on the CNBC “ETF Edge” podcast.

For years, bitcoin has been described as “digital gold,” a comparison that can be powerful and appealing to investors since gold is expected to protect portfolios during periods of broader market stress, moving in a manner uncorrelated to stocks and other risk assets. But for bitcoin, the digital gold narrative is undermined whenever it trades like a risk asset during equity selloffs. After two distinct periods of volatility in 2025, bitcoin hasn’t been able to provide a clear answer to the digital gold question.

“The track record thus far is mixed,” Geraci said.

He pointed to the “tariff tantrum” period of stock selling in April after President Trump announced sweeping global tariffs, a period of market volatility during which bitcoin performed very well. “That caught a lot of investors attention,” he said.

But more recently, as weakness in technology stocks led the market down, most cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, also sold off. Bitcoin, in particular, sold off considerably more than the stock market, he noted.

“The jury is still out,’ Geraci said. 

Geraci stressed that over the long-term, he does believe bitcoin is “heading down that path of acting much more like the physical metal itself.”

But he added that for now, it is acting more like a volatile “teenager.”

“It is only 15 to16 years old, so still has to prove itself as that digital store of value,” he said.

Gold, on the other hand, has a millennia-long track record.

“It’s story is still in its early chapters,” Geraci wrote in a follow-up email to CNBC.

Geraci said it is good to have some perspective during any short-term bout of volatility. While bitcoin is down over 25% since its record high price in October (from its record high to its recent low the loss was an even steeper 35%), it has more than doubled in value since January 2024, when there was an influx of spot bitcoin ETFs to the market after SEC approvals.

Additionally, while spot bitcoin ETFs have seen billions in outflows over the past month, since the beginning of the year, they have attracted roughly $22 billion in inflows.

He thinks that while the recent bitcoin crash began as a function of the tech stock selling and broader equity market selloff, leverage in the crypto market ultimately played a large role in the prolonged decline. “I just think there was a lot of leverage in the category that needed to be flushed out,” he said. “And I think that’s what we’re seeing now.”

Beyond bitcoin itself, Geraci thinks crypto index ETFs, portfolios that invest in a basket of digital assets rather than tracking the spot market in any single cryptocurrency, may become a way more investors seek diversification in the new asset class.

But he also thinks bitcoin will be an exception in the crypto market, where he expects many assets will continue to trade more like tech stocks and investors should expect to see them falling right alongside stocks in equity market drawdowns.

“Setting bitcoin aside, I view most other crypto tokens as risk assets – much closer to high-growth technology stocks than stores of value. Their investment case is tied to the future of stablecoins, tokenization, and decentralized finance,” Geraci wrote via email.