JPMorgan says Bitcoin looks more attractive than gold after a 70% performance gap. The call bets on mean reversion, but timing remains the critical unknown.
JPMorgan: Bitcoin vs Gold After 70% Divergence
JPMorgan strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou recently made a call that sounds counterintuitive at first glance: Bitcoin has become more attractive than gold for long-term investors, specifically because gold has crushed it lately. Since October 2025, gold outperformed Bitcoin by roughly 70%, creating one of the widest relative performance divergences between the two assets in modern market history.
The argument isn't that Bitcoin's fundamentals suddenly improved or that gold's rally is over. Instead, JPMorgan's thesis appears rooted in historical mean reversion patterns. When two assets with some degree of correlation—both serve as alternative stores of value, though in very different ways—experience extreme performance gaps, the laggard often presents better forward risk-reward for patient positioning. It's less about gold being overvalued and more about Bitcoin being relatively cheap after sustained underperformance.
What stood out to me was the confidence required to make this call publicly. Mean reversion trades have a notorious problem: they can be directionally correct but catastrophically mistimed. Gold's recent strength isn't purely technical—it's driven by geopolitical uncertainty, central bank accumulation, and hedging demand that doesn't evaporate just because the chart looks stretched. Bitcoin would need its own fundamental catalyst to close the gap, whether that's regulatory clarity, institutional flow resumption, or macro conditions shifting away from risk-off positioning.
JPMorgan's track record on crypto calls has been mixed, sometimes prescient and sometimes early to the point of being wrong in practice. This one feels like strategic positioning advice for clients with multi-year horizons rather than a near-term trade signal. If you're allocating capital in early 2026 and believe both assets belong in a portfolio, the relative valuation argument has merit. But if gold's drivers persist while Bitcoin's catalysts stay dormant, that 70% gap could widen before it narrows.