Gold and Bitcoin Both Decline in October as the Dollar Reasserts Global Financial Dominance
nashnova research
Gold fell 6.8% and Bitcoin dropped 7.4% in October while the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.3% — the dollar won the safe-haven contest, and the 'de-dollarization trade' narrative is unraveling fast.
What actually drove the gold and Bitcoin rally over the past year?
Gold surged from roughly $2,000/oz to above $5,500; Bitcoin climbed from about $40,000 to over $120,000 — staggering gains.
This means → Bloomberg's columnists argue the rally was never about safety or de-dollarization — it was speculation, pure and simple.
In plain terms = buyers weren't fleeing the dollar; they were chasing momentum. Now the speculative fever has broken, and both assets are repricing to their real attributes.
Why is Bitcoin falling harder?
Last Friday hackers stole $6.3 billion from Binance — the largest crypto theft on record — dealing another blow to the claim that crypto is a reliable store of value.
The deeper issue: Bitcoin increasingly trades like a leveraged version of the Nasdaq 100 — it follows tech stocks down but fails to follow them up.
This reflects a market identity shift. Bitcoin is behaving less like "digital gold" and more like a high-volatility tech-correlated asset.
Where did gold's support pillars go?
Retail investors keep pulling money out of gold-tracking ETFs — exchange-traded funds that mirror the gold price.
Jewelry demand has dropped to its lowest since 2020, and central-bank gold purchases have cooled markedly from the 2022–2024 peak.
This means → the three pillars that held gold up — retail flows, jewelry, central banks — are all loosening at once.
Why is the dollar strengthening amid the turmoil?
Since the US–Iran conflict began, the dollar has appreciated against 14 of 16 major currencies; the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index recently hit a 17-month high.
Short-dated US Treasuries have outperformed both gold and Bitcoin — even though persistent inflation has eroded the real value of longer-dated bonds.
In plain terms = when the world actually needs a haven, the first instinct is still to buy dollars and short-term Treasuries, not gold or Bitcoin.
Have the dollar's own risks disappeared?
No. The Trump administration keeps pressuring the Fed, the fiscal deficit sits at roughly 6% of GDP, and the dollar briefly weakened after the April 2025 "Liberation Day" tariff announcement.
But the US Supreme Court subsequently ruled on both the tariff measures and executive interference with the central bank, partly restoring market confidence in America's checks-and-balances system.
This reflects a subtler point: dollar confidence rests not only on economic fundamentals but on the market's faith in institutional self-correction — the Court's rulings served as a "trust patch."
Is "de-dollarization" just an over-hyped story?
Bitcoin's "digital gold" label produced an ironic footnote: it does resemble gold in one respect — when geopolitical uncertainty nears its peak, both are falling.
That is the opposite of what Bitcoin bulls expected. They bet on "buy crypto in chaos"; reality delivered "buy dollars in chaos."
Whether de-dollarization is merely an overblown narrative is a question the market will keep testing in the months ahead.
市场有风险，内容仅供研究参考，不构成投资建议。