The whole world is celebrating, so why is only the crypto industry "wintering"?

Written by: EeeVee

“As long as you don’t invest in cryptocurrency, you can make money on everything else.” Recently, the currency circle and other markets around the world seem to be in a state of ice and fire. For the whole year of 2025, gold will rise by more than 60%, silver will soar by 210.9%, and the Russell 2000 index will rise by 12.8%; Bitcoin, on the other hand, closed in the dark after a brief high. At the beginning of 2026, the differentiation is still intensifying. On January 20, gold and silver competed to hit new highs, with the US stock Russell 2000 index outperforming the S&P 500 for 11 consecutive days, and the A-share Science and Technology Innovation 50 Index rising more than 15% in a single month. On the other hand, Bitcoin fell below $9 again on January 21 from $9.8 without looking back. !

Silver’s trend over the past year

Funds seem to have decisively left the currency circle after 1011, BTC has been fluctuating below $10 for more than three months, and the market has fallen into a period of “lowest volatility ever”. Disappointment spread among investors in the currency circle, and when asked about investors who left cryptocurrencies to make money in other markets, they even shared the “secret” of “ABC” – “Anything But Crypto”, as long as you don’t invest in cryptocurrencies, everything else can be earned. The “Mass Adoption” that everyone was looking forward to in the last round seems to be here now. It’s just not the popularization of decentralized applications that everyone expects, but Wall Street-led and complete “capitalization”. This round of the American establishment and Wall Street embraced cryptocurrencies in an unprecedented manner. SEC approves spot ETFs; BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase have allocated assets to Ethereum; The United States includes Bitcoin in its national strategic reserves; Pensions in several states have invested in Bitcoin; Even the NYSE has announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading platform. So the question arises: why is the price performance so disappointing when Bitcoin has received so much political and capital endorsement while the precious metals and stock markets are racing to new highs? When investors in the currency circle are accustomed to learning to read the price of US stocks before the market to judge the rise and fall of the currency circle, why doesn’t Bitcoin follow suit? Why is Bitcoin so weak? Leading indicators Bitcoin is a “leading indicator” of global risk assets, and Real Vision founder Raoul Pal has repeatedly mentioned in many of his articles that because the price of Bitcoin is purely driven by global liquidity and is not directly affected by the financial reports and interest rates of any country, its volatility is often ahead of mainstream risk assets such as the Nasdaq index. ! According to MacroMicro, the turning point in Bitcoin’s price has led the S&P 500 multiple times over the past few years. Therefore, once Bitcoin’s upward momentum, as a leading indicator, stalls and cannot reach new highs, it constitutes a strong warning signal that the upward momentum of other assets may also be close to drying up. Liquidity is tight Secondly, the price of Bitcoin, so far, is still highly correlated with the net liquidity of the global dollar. While the Fed cut interest rates in 2024 and 2025, quantitative tightening (QT) from 2022 continues to drain liquidity from the market. Bitcoin hit a new high in 2025, more because ETFs brought in new funds, but this did not change the fundamental pattern of tight global macro liquidity. Bitcoin’s sideways movement is a direct response to this macro reality. In a money-scarce environment, it is difficult for it to start a super bull market. The world’s second largest source of liquidity, the yen, has also begun to tighten. The Bank of Japan raised its short-term policy rate to 0.75% in December 2025, the highest level in nearly 30 years. This has directly impacted an important source of funds for global risk assets over the past few decades: yen carry trades. Historical data shows that since 2024, all three rate hikes by the Bank of Japan have been accompanied by a price drop of more than 20% for Bitcoin. The simultaneous tightening of the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan has made the global liquidity environment worse. !

The decline in the currency circle every time Japan raises interest rates

geopolitical conflicts Finally, the potential “black swan” of geopolitics is keeping the nerves on the market’s nerves, and Trump’s series of internal and external actions in early 2026 have pushed this uncertainty to new heights. Internationally, the Trump administration’s actions are fraught with unpredictability. From military intervention in Venezuela, the capture of its president (unprecedented in the history of modern international relations), to the imminent war with Iran again; From trying to forcibly buy Greenland, to issuing new tariff threats to the EU. This series of radical unilateralist behaviors is comprehensively intensifying the contradictions between major powers. In the United States, his actions have raised deep concerns about the constitutional crisis. Not only did he propose renaming the “Ministry of Defense” to the “Ministry of War,” but he had also ordered active duty troops to prepare for potential deployments in the country. These actions, combined with his remarks that he regretted not using the military to intervene and did not want to lose the midterm elections, made the public’s concerns increasingly clear: Will he refuse to accept the defeat in the midterm elections and use force to be re-elected? This speculation and high pressure are already intensifying internal contradictions in the United States, and there are signs of expanding marches across the country. ! Trump invoked the Insurrection Act last week and deployed troops to Minnesota to quell protests, after which the Pentagon has ordered about 1,500 active-duty soldiers in Alaska to be on standby The normalization of this conflict is dragging the world into a “gray zone” between local wars and a new Cold War. The traditional all-out hot war still has a relatively clear path and market expectations, and has even been accompanied by the release of water to “bail out the market”. This local conflict has strong uncertainty, and it is full of “unknown unknowns”. For the venture capital market, which is highly dependent on stable expectations, this uncertainty is fatal. When large capital cannot judge the future direction, the most rational choice is to increase cash holdings and wait and see, rather than allocating funds to high-risk and high-volatility assets. Why don’t other assets fall? In stark contrast to the silence in the currency circle, precious metals, US stocks, A-shares and other markets have risen in turn since 2025. However, the rise in these markets is not due to the general improvement of macro and liquidity fundamentals, but the structural market driven by sovereign will and industrial policy in the context of the great power game. The rise in gold is a reaction of sovereign countries to the existing international order, rooted in the credit cracks in the dollar system. The global financial tsunami in 2008 and the freeze on Russia’s foreign exchange reserves in 2022 completely shattered the “risk-free” myth that the US dollar and US bonds are the world’s ultimate reserve assets. In this context, central banks around the world have become “price-insensitive buyers.” They buy gold not to make short-term money, but to find an ultimate store of value that does not rely on any sovereign credit. According to data from the World Gold Council, in 2022 and 2023, global central banks have exceeded 1,000 tons of net gold purchases for two consecutive years, setting a record high. The main driver of this round of gold rise is official power, not market-oriented speculative power. ! Comparison of the proportion of gold in sovereign central bank reserves to U.S. Treasury bonds, the total reserves of gold in 2025 have exceeded U.S. Treasury bonds The rise in the stock market is a demonstration of the country’s industrial policy. Whether it is the United States’ “AI nationalization” strategy or China’s “industrial independence” policy, it is the deep involvement of state forces and the flow of capital. Take the United States as an example, through the “Chips and Science Act”, the artificial intelligence industry has been elevated to the strategic height of national security. Funds have clearly flowed out of large technology stocks and into smaller and more policy-oriented small and medium-sized stocks. In China’s A-share market, funds are also highly concentrated in areas closely related to national security and industrial upgrading, such as “information innovation” and “national defense and military industry”. This market, which is strongly dominated by the government, has a natural difference between its pricing logic and Bitcoin, which relies on pure market-oriented liquidity. Will history repeat itself? Historically, this is not the first time that Bitcoin has diverged from the performance of other assets. And every differentiation ends in a strong rebound in Bitcoin. There have been a total of four extreme oversold situations in history where Bitcoin’s RSI (Relative Strength Index) fell below 30 against gold, in 2015, 2018, 2022 and 2025. Every time Bitcoin is extremely undervalued relative to gold, it signals a rebound in the exchange rate pair or Bitcoin price. !

Bitcoin/gold historical trend, RSI indicator below

In 2015, at the end of the bear market, Bitcoin’s RSI against gold fell below 30, followed by a super bull market of 2016-2017. In 2018, during the bear market, Bitcoin fell by more than 40%, while gold rose by nearly 6%. After the RSI fell below 30, Bitcoin rebounded more than 770% from its 2020 lows. In 2022, during the bear market, Bitcoin fell nearly 60%. After the RSI fell below 30, Bitcoin rebounded and outperformed gold again. From the end of 2025 to the present, we have witnessed this historic oversold signal for the fourth time. Gold surged 64% in 2025, while Bitcoin’s RSI relative to gold fell into oversold territory again. Can you still catch up with other assets now? In the midst of the “ABC” clamor, it may be a dangerous decision to easily sell crypto assets to catch up with other markets that currently seem to be more prosperous. When small-cap stocks begin to lead the rise, historically it is often the last carnival before liquidity dries up at the end of the bull market. The Russell 2000 index has risen more than 45% since its 2025 lows, but most of its constituents are less profitable and very sensitive to interest rate changes. Once the Fed’s monetary policy falls short of expectations, the vulnerability of these companies will be immediately exposed. Secondly, the frenzy in the AI sector is taking on typical foam characteristics. Whether it’s Deutsche Bank’s investigation or Bridgewater founder Dalio’s warning, the AI bubble is listed as the biggest risk to the market in 2026. The valuations of star companies such as Nvidia and Palantir have reached historical highs, and whether their earnings growth can support such high valuations is being questioned more and more. The deeper risk is that AI’s huge energy consumption may trigger a new round of inflationary pressures, forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy and puncture asset bubbles. According to a survey by Bank of America fund managers in January, global investor optimism is currently at its highest level since July 2021, and global growth expectations have soared. Cash holdings fell to a record low of 3.2%, and protections against market pullbacks were at their lowest level since January 2018. On the one hand, there are wildly rising sovereign assets and generally optimistic investor sentiment; On the other side is the intensifying geopolitical conflict. In this context, Bitcoin’s “stagnation” is not as simple as “underperforming the market”. It’s more like a sobering signal, an early warning of greater risks ahead, and a build-up for a larger narrative shift. For true long-termists, this is the time to test faith, reject temptation, and prepare for the crises and opportunities that come your way.