Gold is up 77% over the past 12 months while Bitcoin is down 47% from its October high and roughly 25% below where it started the year. The last time gold and Bitcoin diverged this sharply was early 2020, and Bitcoin went on to rally over 1,000% in the two years that followed—JPMorgan thinks a similar setup may be forming now.

JPMorgan’s quantitative strategist, Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, argued in a February note that Bitcoin is now more attractive than gold over the long term. His reasoning is that gold has actually gotten more volatile than Bitcoin. He also points that gold’s 77% rally came with wider and more frequent price swings, while Bitcoin’s volatility has been falling—and that the ratio between the two has dropped to about 1.5, which is a record low.

If Bitcoin is now closer to gold in terms of volatility, JPMorgan argues it should also be closer in terms of how much money is invested in it. Right now, roughly $8 trillion in private sector capital sits in gold through ETFs, bars, and coins. For Bitcoin to match that level of investment, JPMorgan forecasts its price would need to reach $266,000.

On top of that, BTC is trading below its estimated production cost of $87,000—what it costs miners on average to produce one coin—and every time that’s happened in past cycles, the price eventually recovered. The bank’s own commodity team projects gold at $6,300 by year-end, which is about 21% upside from $5,200. Compare that to the 280% implied by their $266,000 Bitcoin target from current levels near $70,000, and it’s clear which asset JPMorgan thinks has more room to move.

As JPMorgan argues Bitcoin is the better bet, Goldman Sachs believes otherwise. The bank raised its year-end gold price target to $5,400 per ounce in January, which from $5,200 today still implies upside with room to run further as central banks keep buying. Goldman’s reasoning is that central banks are still buying gold at a pace not seen in decades and that gold doesn’t need Bitcoin-style volatility to deliver strong returns.

Gold has also never lost more than 45% of its value in a single drawdown, while Bitcoin has dropped over 50% four times since 2017. For Goldman, the consistency is what makes gold a safer long-term hold compared to BTC.

Bitcoin has more room to run from $70,000 than gold does from $5,200, but you’d have to hold through 40-50% drawdowns to get there. Gold doesn’t ask that of you. The thing is, gold has sharply outperformed Bitcoin before, in 2015 and again in early 2020, and both times Bitcoin eventually caught up and blew past it—and the same type of gap is forming now.

Moreso, Bitcoin now has an institutional foundation that didn’t exist during previous drawdowns, with spot ETFs holding over $100 billion in assets and Strategy alone sitting on 738,000 BTC. If the institutional floor is strong enough to drive a recovery once the macro pressure eases, buying Bitcoin at $70,000 with JPMorgan’s $266,000 long-term target on the table could end up being one of the better entry points of this cycle. If not, gold at $5,200 with JPMorgan projecting $6,300 to $8,000 and central banks still loading up was the right call all along.

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