Crypto
Bitcoin Medals Manufactured At Sakamoto Metal
(Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images)

Bitcoin is underperforming precious metals now, but experts warn of “short-sighted” view

The debate on investing in digital gold vs. actual gold continues, but it’s helpful to put each one’s performance in context.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy

Bitcoin is hovering just below $90,000, a level it’s struggling to break, while precious metals are on a tear, with gold and silver setting new records as the debasement trade continues to fuel the rally.

The DeFi Report compared where bitcoin stood 3.5 months post-peak in the last two cycles, and in this context, the asset still appears to fare well, or less bad, than its performance suggests.

While bitcoin is now down 29% 110 days after it hit its all-time high, during the 2021 cycle, bitcoin was down 41% 110 days after its November 9, 2021, peak. Meanwhile, in the 2017 cycle, bitcoin was down 55% 110 days after its peak on December 18, 2017.

“BTC holding up quite well, relatively speaking. Yet it feels worse this time because other (rival) assets [gold/silver] are outperforming on BTC’s weakness,” according to The DeFi Report.

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, went even further in his precious metals comparisons on X.

“The dread I see from bitcoiners (and the football spiking from the haters) is very short-sighted to me given that since 2022 (right before the BlackRock ETF filing) Bitcoin is up 429%, gold 177%, Silver 350%, QQQ 140%,” he wrote, adding the “institutionalization narrative got priced in very quickly and ahead of it all actually happening.”

Nic Puckrin, cofounder of Coin Bureau, told Sherwood News that the precious metals trade has been gathering momentum for months and, as with any momentum trade, could run for far longer than many expect.

“At this point, we’re likely to see retail FOMO, as investors who have missed out on the metals rally so far pile into the market. For the time being, the macro picture supports a risk-off environment where gold truly shines,” he said.

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Sage D. Young

Ripple launches treasury platform to manage cash and cryptocurrencies

Ripple, the firm closely tied to the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, XRP, introduced a new treasury platform for digital asset and traditional cash management for users like financial officers, treasurers, and accountants. 

Ripple’s move comes more than three months after it acquired treasury software provider GTreasury for $1 billion, one of several steps to grow the firm’s position in corporate finance.

Combining Ripple’s blockchain rails and GTreasury’s software, the new platform’s goal is to simplify treasury operations. It eliminates settlement delays with payment times of three to five seconds and optimizes yield from working capital 24/7 through tokenized money market funds such as BlackRock’s BUIDL and overnight secure repo markets with RLUSD, according to a Tuesday blog post. 

Ripple Treasury also aims to provide “real-time cash positions, automated forecasting, and seamless reporting across traditional cash, digital assets, RLUSD, and XRP holdings,” the blog post stated.

Last year, Ripple filed its national banking license application with the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, while the firm’s subsidiary Standard Custody & Trust Company applied for a Federal Reserve master account, which would allow Ripple to hold RLUSD reserves directly with the Fed.

XRP has seen $2.4 billion in trading volume in the last 24 hours, increasing 1.8% in the period. The token’s all-time high was set in July 2025 at $3.65. Meanwhile, spot XRP ETFs had nearly $9.2 million worth of inflows on Tuesday, bringing cumulative inflows to $1.4 billion.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
1/27/26
Bitcoin miners hit with downgrades, winter storm

While the bitcoin hashrate has crashed, experts say this is a temporary reaction to the weather.

US-CRYPTOCURRENCY-CLIMATE-EMPLOYMENT-CHINA
$82B
Sage D. Young

Crypto money laundering activity totaled more than $82 billion in 2025, more than 8x higher than 2020’s figure of $10 billion, according to a Tuesday report published by crypto analytics firm Chainalysis. Chinese-language networks dominated the ecosystem, accounting for roughly 20% of the illicit activity, or $16.1 billion, last year:

“Compared to other laundering endpoints, since 2020, inflows to identified CMLNs [Chinese-langugage money laundering networks] grew 7,325 times faster than those to centralized exchanges, 1,810 times faster than those to decentralized finance (DeFi), and 2,190 times faster than intra-illicit on-chain flows.”

Tom Keatinge, director at the Centre for Finance & Security at security think tank Royal United Services Institute, told Chainalysis that the rapid development of Chinese-language networks is an “an unforeseen consequence” of China’s imposition of capital controls.

“Wealthy individuals seeking to move money out of China and evade these controls provide the impetus and liquidity pool needed to service organized crime groups based in the West,” he noted.

Keatinge told Chainalysis, “The professional enablers of this capital flight provide the services necessary to match these two independent yet mutually beneficial needs.” 

Chinese-language networks offer six primary money movement techniques to clean dirty money, which include recruiting individuals to rent out their financial identities, selling illicit cryptocurrency at a discounted rate, and obscuring fund origins through multiple transactions. 

Overall, this Chinese ecosystem processed nearly $44 million per day last year. 

crypto
Sage D. Young

Avalanche joins class of cryptocurrencies with at least one ETF

Investment management company VanEck on Monday introduced the first exchange-traded fund offering spot exposure to AVAX, the native token for the Avalanche blockchain and the latest cryptocurrency with an ETF. 

The new investment vehicle also aims to provide staking rewards for holders, according to the press release. AVAX, which has seen over $354 million in trading volume in the last 24 hours, is up slightly today. The token is trading at $11.70 as of 1:20 p.m. ET, a far cry from its all-time high of $144.96 in 2021. 

The nascent VanEck fund joins a group of its crypto-specific ETFs, including the firm’s bitcoin ETF, with $1.4 billion in total assets; its ethereum ETF, which holds $147.5 million; and its solana ETF, with assets totaling $27.9 million.

Yaël Bizouati-Kennedy
1/26/26
Fears grow that bitcoin is entering a bear market

“While a new all-time high this year still isn’t out of the question, the next 30 days will be crucial in determining whether a bear market is already here.”

Bitcoin balloon deflated

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