According to Woofun AI, the asset market experienced a rare simultaneous downturn in 2026, and both Bitcoin and gold became the worst performing asset classes during the year. Charlie Billello, chief market strategist at a creative planning firm, confirmed that as of Friday, October 23, this is the first time that these two assets, traditionally seen as a means of dealing with monetary pressure, have simultaneously fallen to the bottom of a single calendar year.
This abnormal trend shatters the market's inherent perception that “digital gold” and physical gold usually perform very differently in a stressful environment, and marks that the two fall into a rare resonant decline cycle in 2026.
Disaggregated from a specific data dimension, this simultaneous weakness is reflected not only in relative rankings, but also in the sharp contrast between absolute declines and long-term returns. As of Friday, October 23, Bitcoin's cumulative decline during the year was 7.3%, while the decline in gold widened slightly to 7.5%, both of which lagged significantly behind traditional safe-haven or yield assets such as stocks, bonds, and even cash. Charlie Billello emphasized on the X platform that this was a situation not seen in any calendar year. If you extend the perspective to a long-term historical dimension, the comparison is particularly stark: since 2011, Bitcoin's annualized return was as high as 120.6%, while gold was only around 6.3% during the same period.
However, market performance in 2026 completely erased long-term advantage accumulation. As far as gold is concerned, it experienced a strong market with a sharp rise of 63.7% in 2025, and the current decline is seen as a sharp reversal after a recent strong trend; for Bitcoin, despite its excellent long-term performance, this weakness once again highlights the vulnerability of cryptocurrencies when faced with the risk of maximum retracement.
According to data compiled by Woofun AI, the magnitude of this decline from a high level made the risk characteristics of the two assets tend to be consistent in the short term, and the asset diversification effect that investors originally relied on faced serious challenges in 2026.
In the gold-related stock market, this downward pressure was further amplified, showing signs of extreme weakness. According to the “Kobesi Letter” analysis, the current trading price of about 92% of the shares held in the GDX gold mining ETF has fallen below its 50-day moving average.
This ratio increased 80% in just 21 trading days, showing an accelerated accumulation of selling pressure. More worryingly, about 90% of the stocks included in the GDX index are also trading below their 200-day moving average, which is already the highest level in three months. Historical data provides a kind of frame of reference: similar technical breakdowns occurred in March and December 2024, after which the GDX index rose 21.5% and 15.4%, respectively, in the following month. Although historical data cannot guarantee that there will be another rebound in the future, these extreme valuation deviations do show how serious the selling pressure on the current market has reached. The deep correction in mining stocks not only reflects the weakness of the gold price itself, but also suggests that market concerns about the profitability of the gold industry chain are intensifying. This sentiment transmission effect may further drag down the stability of spot gold prices.
A deeper reflection lies in the differences in asset function and their potential risks. What's strange for investors is not only that Bitcoin and gold are falling, but that despite their different functions in many portfolios — gold is viewed as a defensive asset, while bitcoin is often viewed as a highly volatile cryptocurrency despite its growing popularity as a store of value — they are also showing signs of weakness at the same time. The poor performance of the two combined constituted a rare market situation.
If one of these assets starts to recover, investors will be watching to see if the difference in performance between the two assets will reappear; if the two remain weak, 2026 may be the real litmus test for the hedging function of these two assets.
At the same time, infrastructure-level risks are quietly accumulating. Coinbase (COIN.US) claims to hold approximately 12% of the world's Bitcoin, and the company has detailed the technical and operational challenges Bitcoin needs to overcome when dealing with the threat of quantum computing.
This side note reminds the market that in addition to price fluctuations, the security of the underlying technology is also a key variable affecting Bitcoin's long-term value storage function.