Gold surged more than 2% on Monday to a record high of $4,475 per ounce, leading a strong rally in precious metals and leaving Bitcoin struggling to keep up. While investors pile into traditional safe havens and AI-related stocks, Bitcoin briefly touched $90,000 before slipping back into the $88,000 range, falling behind the market’s clear winners.
Gold, Silver, and AI Take the Lead
The gap highlights a noticeable shift in where capital is flowing. The long-standing idea of Bitcoin as “digital gold” is being tested as investors turn to the real thing. Silver also hit a record high, climbing close to $70 an ounce.
Analysts at ByteTree pointed out that silver’s recent run is starting to rival Bitcoin’s long-term returns — a notable moment for precious metals after years of lagging crypto.
“Bitcoiners can’t ignore the bull market in precious metals, which continues to roar,” ByteTree wrote. “I suspect that when the rally runs out of steam, Bitcoin will step in.”
At the same time, money is rushing into AI infrastructure. Alphabet’s $4.75 billion acquisition of energy infrastructure firm Intersect underscores the growing demand for data centers needed to power AI workloads.
This trend is spilling over into crypto-adjacent stocks. Publicly traded miners that have pivoted toward high-performance computing (HPC) are benefiting. Hut 8 shares jumped more than 17% after a price target upgrade and news of a major data center lease.
Bitcoin Faces Short-Term Headwinds
Adding to Bitcoin’s challenges, traders are bracing for a wave of options expiries. Roughly $27.4 billion worth of Bitcoin and Ether options are set to expire this week on Deribit, a setup that often brings caution and choppy price action.
Institutions Reallocate, Not Retreat
The broader picture suggests institutional investors aren’t fleeing risk — they’re repositioning. Capital is moving toward assets seen as safer stores of value, like gold, and toward high-conviction growth themes such as AI. Bitcoin, for now, sits in between, lacking a clear short-term catalyst to pull it higher.
The shift by miners like Hut 8 into AI infrastructure is especially telling. It suggests that some industry leaders see more stable or attractive returns from their computing assets outside of pure crypto mining, at least for the moment.
For Bitcoin, the message from markets is clear: while the long-term story may remain intact, attention — and capital — is currently elsewhere.
