Why will Bitcoin prices lag significantly behind gold and the US stock market in 2025?

In 2025, the performance of assets showed historic differentiation, with gold reaching a new high of $3,700 per ounce, U.S. stocks continuing to rise under the influence of AI giants like NVIDIA, while Bitcoin fluctuated around the $100,000 mark, significantly underperforming the former two. On the surface, this appears to be a difference in price fluctuations, but the deeper logic is a systemic restructuring of energy allocation, geopolitical dynamics, and capital flows.

Why the AI Productivity Revolution in the US Stock Market Crushes Bitcoin

(Source: The Block)

The strong performance of the U.S. stock market in 2025 does not stem from traditional fiat currency inflation logic, but rather from the exponential explosion of total factor productivity (TFP) brought by artificial intelligence. When tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta invest hundreds of billions of dollars to build AI data centers, they are essentially competing for control over global electricity quotas. This energy battle directly impacts the core value foundation of Bitcoin.

In the past decade, Bitcoin has been the only machine capable of transforming energy on a large scale into a digitally scarce asset, which is a thermodynamically based value anchoring. However, from 2024 to 2025, generative artificial intelligence has become an extremely strong competitor. The economic added value generated by each kilowatt-hour of electricity used to train the next generation of large models or drive high-performance computing chips has temporarily surpassed the returns from hashing collisions to produce Bitcoin at this current stage. This difference in marginal returns forms choices in price and funding, and the fact that many Bitcoin mining farms have already been converted into AI computing centers is the best proof.

Capital is profit-seeking and extremely sensitive to returns. When the growth curve of silicon-based intelligence is steeper than the curve of scarcity for digital reserves, the global surplus liquidity will prioritize flowing towards productivity assets with nonlinear growth potential, rather than merely value storage tools. From the underlying computing power of NVIDIA, to the cloud services of Microsoft and Amazon, and then to application layers like ChatGPT and Claude, each layer replicates the logic of productivity explosion, forming a strong capital siphoning effect.

If holders of AI leaders with monopolistic positions can achieve high certainty in nonlinear growth, then holding Bitcoin, which does not generate cash flow, becomes extremely costly in terms of opportunity cost. The year 2025 is on the eve of a rare productivity singularity in human history, with all capital chasing nodes that may produce superintelligence. As a challenger to the monetary system, Bitcoin's appeal is diluted in the face of the narrative of the productivity revolution in the short term.

The atomic certainty of gold defeats the code consensus of Bitcoin

The strong performance of gold in 2025 is essentially the result of the increasing entropy in global geopolitics. In the face of de-globalization and systemic uncertainty, sovereign-level players need an asset that does not require network connections and does not rely on any clearing system. In this extreme logic of system fault tolerance, ancient gold provides atomic-level certainty.

Although Bitcoin is hailed as digital gold, it still heavily relies on network infrastructure and centralized liquidity channels. When the system faces risks of disconnection at the physical layer, atomic-level certainty prevails over Bit consensus in the short term. Physical gold can at least be held in hand or placed in central bank vaults, and this physical tangibility holds irreplaceable value in extreme situations.

Gold is a hedge against systemic collapse, while Bitcoin is currently viewed more by the market as a spillover of systemic liquidity. When global central banks began record gold accumulation in 2022, it reflected doubts about the long-term stability of the US dollar credit system. Countries like China, Russia, and India continue to increase their gold reserves, and this trend of de-dollarization is being reinforced against the backdrop of escalating geopolitical conflicts.

In contrast, although Bitcoin claims to be decentralized, its liquidity is highly concentrated in a few exchanges, which must comply with regulatory requirements in various countries. When sovereign nations need to allocate assets in extreme situations, the physical characteristics of gold and its thousands of years of historical validation make it a more secure choice.

Bitcoin's Three Major Dilemmas Under Double Pressure

1. Competitive Disadvantages in Energy Allocation

· The economic value generated by AI computing power per kilowatt-hour exceeds the revenue from Bitcoin mining.

· Global power quotas are prioritized for AI data centers rather than mining farms.

· The trend of mining farm renovations directly weakens the growth of Bitcoin network hash power.

2. ETF Tooling Brings Volatility Dampening

· The popularity of spot ETFs has allowed Bitcoin to enter the traditional asset allocation framework.

· Follow traditional financial risk control models to smooth volatility, stifling explosiveness.

· Becomes a high beta technology index, highly sensitive to the Federal Reserve's interest rate policy.

3. The Relative Decline of Narrative Appeal

The narrative power of the productivity singularity far exceeds the allure of the currency revolution.

· The characteristic of not generating cash flow has significant opportunity cost in a high interest rate environment.

· Early participant profit-taking pressure and institutional buying form a time hedge.

Bitcoin's Repricing and Future Role

Bitcoin in 2025 is not being disproven, but rather repriced. It temporarily makes way for the two ends of productivity singularity and geopolitical defense needs, bearing the cost of time rather than direction. The current state is essentially a hedge result of forces of different scales: the profit-taking pressure from early participants, and the ongoing buying from sovereign nations and long-term funds, offsetting each other over time, resulting in the price being compressed within a long-term low volatility range.

From the perspective of complex systems, this prolonged low-volatility oscillation is dynamically referred to as the reconstruction of an “attractor.” The system accumulates over time, leaving room for the next scale change. Bitcoin is currently in a phase adjustment period within its fractal structure. When the marginal efficiency of AI declines and capital liquidity continues to overflow, Bitcoin will return to its true role: a liquidity value carrier across cycles.

Historical experience shows that Bitcoin temporarily loses its appeal during the overheating phase of each technological cycle. During the 2017 ICO bubble and the 2021 NFT frenzy, Bitcoin was similarly marginalized by new narratives. However, when the bubble bursts and liquidity seeks a safe haven again, Bitcoin always manages to return to the center stage. The current AI craze will eventually face diminishing marginal returns, at which point not generating cash flow will become an advantage, as it will not be impacted by downward revisions of profit expectations.