★ Episode 04 · Metals Beat Coins
The scoreboard tells the story without commentary. Bitcoin, minus forty-six percent over the trailing twelve months. Ethereum, minus forty. Gold, plus twenty-two. Silver, plus fifty-four. The last time physical monetary metals beat the leading cryptocurrencies over a full year was 2019 — the year before the pandemic remade the retail investor. That regime is over.
Spot: gold, four thousand one hundred thirteen dollars per ounce. Silver, sixty dollars and thirteen cents. Platinum, sixteen hundred thirty-four. Palladium — the industry's cautionary tale over the prior half-decade — is quietly back to twelve hundred seventy-two, recovering from a bottom near nine hundred just months ago. The white metals, dismissed by the internet economy, are awakening.
Equities continue their steady ascent. The S&P at seventy-five sixty-nine. The Nasdaq, twenty-six thousand two hundred fifty-six. The Dow, fifty-two thousand six hundred thirty-two. The ten-year Treasury yields four point five-five percent. The dollar index remains subdued at one hundred. Nothing in the equity or bond tape suggests distress. The story is on the digital side of the ledger.
Bitcoin has not failed. That is not the argument. The argument is that a household allocation that owned only screens this year owned only losses — and the households that kept metal in the vault, with screens as satellite exposure, outperformed by margins the family will ask about at the next gathering.
Anchored by Nigel Whitworth, on behalf of Peter Fetherston — Managing Director, NY Office. Filmed in the Valor Terminal at valor-pm.com/terminal. New episodes every Friday.