Gold Mania and a Bitcoin Stall

Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Monday, January 26, and today, we are getting caught up on a wild weekend. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying the breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you wanna dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit.ly/breakdownpod. Alright, friends. First off, sorry this is coming out a little bit late. It got caught up in the big storm that happened this weekend. In any case though, Bitcoin is stalling out as gold surges to new highs. Bitcoin ended the week with another Sunday night collapse plunging to $86,000 to mark a five week low. Meanwhile, gold is seeing a blue sky breakout heading above $5,000 for the first time ever. Gold is now up 50% over the past six months, 15% since the year began, and a full 8.5% just last week. Silver is firmly over a $100 and close to returning to the $19.80 high. Other metals are having similar runs with short squeezes rolling through the sector. At this point, it's difficult to say this is just about the safe haven bid. With precious metal volatility spiking, this looks like a full blown speculative mania. In many ways, gold's performance seems to be drawing attention and liquidity away from Bitcoin. And while the speculative surge in gold is noteworthy, the safe haven narrative also can't be written completely off. The US foreign policy is increasingly volatile and capricious, to put it mildly. On the domestic front, civil unrest is at the risk of spiraling into something altogether more dangerous. In the background, we have record treasury issuance that's only expected to increase this year. These factors are helping drive foreign central banks to buy gold in volumes that haven't been seen in decades. The gold breakout has been, in fact, so profound that crypto industry folks are forced to pay attention. Some analysts are even looking to gold as their next big call. Charles Edwards of Capital Management wrote, some of the possible price targets for gold here might sound pie in the sky. As always, any and all of these trends can reverse at any time. That said, gold trends tend to be sticky. They last five years on average. A typical gold outperformance rally runs on and off for a full decade, and we are just eighteen months into the current gold bull market, giving the potential for a lot of runway from here. His note attached a $12,000 to $23,000 per ounce price target to gold over the next three to eight years. Gold overwhelming Bitcoin's narrative seems to be an important driver for market dynamics so far this year. Zero hedge noted that …