Gold’s bull run is set to continue in 2026, and crypto’s weakness could boost silver higher
NEW YORK (December 23) While Bitcoin, AI and the tech sector are likely to take a step back in 2026, gold’s bull run still has legs – and crypto’s weakness could add to silver’s strength, according to Charlie Morris, CIO and founder of ByteTree.
ByteTree created the BOLD Index, which blends Bitcoin and gold on a risk-weighted basis, and the 21Shares BOLD ETP (BOLD) which tracks the index is listed across Europe. The theory behind the BOLD index is that gold and Bitcoin are uncorrelated alternative assets, so balancing between them is very advantageous.
Morris is very bullish on both Bitcoin and gold over the long term. Five years ago – well before the current bull market had even begun – he predicted that the yellow metal would hit $7,000 per ounce by 2030. This was an extreme outlier at the time, but with gold prices gaining around $2,500 in the five years since, it looks less outlandish by the day.
“Generally speaking, I don't make projections, but I did in 2020 make that projection,” Morris told Kitco News. “It's not looking so stupid now.”
“It's all worked for the wrong reasons, which is hilarious,” he said. “And maybe the [original] reasons come true later, but my simple thesis was that long-term expectations for inflation rose in the Western world, from 2% to about 4%, and the money printing would see lasting inflation.”
Morris said markets have since seen monetary inflation, but not yet sustained consumer inflation. Still, he believes this will materialize eventually. “It just seems so inevitable with these persistent deficits that at some point it will come through,” he said. “I just don't see how you can come into this world full of money and for it not to feed through eventually, particularly with policymakers so focused these days on the real economy. As money finds its way into the real economy, then that's got to be inflationary sooner or later.”
Morris said that when this same thesis is applied to silver, it produces a projection that looks even more dramatic – even after silver’s recent run to fresh all-time highs.
“The silver forecast was just logical,” he said. “Silver is in a nice bull market, and if gold is $7,000 and you have a gold-silver ratio of 40 – which is not particularly aggressive for the top of a bull market – it takes you to $175,” he said. “It was as simple as that, and I just pointed out the obvious.”
Morris said his philosophy on Bitcoin and gold is very simple: the two assets are not in competition.
“Gold is the reserve asset of the real world, and Bitcoin is the reserve asset of the internet. That's why the price of gold correlates with things in the real world like bonds, real yields and stuff, and that's why Bitcoin correlates with internet stocks and anything to do with technology and the internet. It's obvious in that sense.”
And unlike many Bitcoin maximalists, Morris’ bullishness does not rely on BTC becoming a fully mainstream reserve asset. “Why the hell should Bitcoin be the reserve asset of the real world, and why the hell would gold be the reserve asset of the internet?” he mused. “There are people waiting for the central banks to buy Bitcoin. It's just not going to happen. Not in my lifetime, not in anyone's lifetime. Gold has that role.”
“I think that's really important to understand,” he added. “That's why they're fundamentally different, and they're uncorrelated, and that's why BOLD works.”
Morris said this logic results in a simple yet powerful strategy for long-term investment – one that relies on the ability of gold and Bitcoin to sniff out the likely trajectory of their respective sectors.
“When is Bitcoin going to go up? When gold goes down,” he said. “I think that when we get bored of gold and silver, then it's Bitcoin's turn. I don’t know when that is; it could be today, it could be next year, it could be the year after, but they seem to take it in turns.”
And the two assets are clearly at opposite ends of the investor sentiment spectrum at the moment.
“Bitcoin is currently very oversold; it's been more oversold in the past,” Morris said. “And gold and silver are very over bought, [but] they've been more overbought in the past. One's hot, one's not, that's pretty obvious.”
The BOLD thesis would also suggest that AI and tech are indeed overvalued – and overdue for a significant correction. “I do think that the Internet's going down, because it's just been too hot for too long,” he said. “AI obviously is a frenzy in terms of capital expenditure and returns on net capital, and the no-profit stocks have overdone it.”
“We are in a historic equity momentum bubble; the extension of net positive momentum has never been large for 25 years at least,” Morris added. “And Bitcoin is correlated to the internet, so I think anything internet is probably going to say, ‘Thanks, it's been great, time to take a break.’”
That said, Morris believes that gold and Bitcoin will both continue to post strong gains for many years to come – even as they take turns as the top performer – in part because neither has yet achieved mainstream industry support.
“On gold, I would say institutional investors are underweight and retail and family offices are probably okay,” he said. “And where are we on Bitcoin? The world is underweight – given the size of the asset and its likely future importance, no one owns it.”
“Most average wealth managers in America, I still don't believe are allocated to Bitcoin,” he added. “If you go and buy a balanced portfolio off your bank or wealth advisor, I get the impression you're not getting Bitcoin. We look at the [iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF] holders, and it's all the pirates of Wall Street. It's all the trading firms and the hedge funds and the high-frequency crowd. It's not really the mom-and-pop, Merrill Lynch-type wealth managers.”
“That's what keeps me more bullish than anything else, is the fact that the allocation, certainly in UK wealth management, European wealth management, U.S., Canadian wealth management, is approximately zero.”
Morris said that in the near term, silver also stands to benefit from the crypto correction.
“Kitco people love silver like I love silver, and silver's just been forgotten,” he said. “The gold/silver ratio is at 68 or so at the moment, but it's been hanging around 100 or just below for years. All the fun money went, ‘Ah, I’m bored of silver, let's have a go at this digital stuff,’ so they all went away. Then silver had no friends and it just was dirt.”
“Then a few weirdos like me and Kitco readers said, ‘Let's buy this thing.’ And guess what? Its time has come.”
That said, Morris cautioned against getting too attached to silver, characterizing it as more of a short-term play. “Gold and Bitcoin are the daddies in their respective categories, global neutral assets,” he said. “Silver's the tourist. You don't need to own silver; you rent silver. You own Bitcoin and gold.”
And while others are ready to call the top of the precious metals bull market, Morris sees other indications that gold has further to fly.
“The VanEck GDX still hasn't had any inflows,” he noted. “It's got the same number of shares that it did at the end of 2013. Oil's on the floor, and with the miners, they've had this perfect setup with a high gold price and a low oil price, margins through the roof… and I just don't think Wall Street's that interested.”
The general public also appears to still be skeptical, even after the yellow metal’s record-breaking run. “You look at the comments section in a credible newspaper whenever they talk about gold, and you just get these ridiculous comments about ‘barbaric relic’ still, after all these years,” Morris said. “There's just no societal consensus that gold is useful.”
“I think that's really bullish,” he said. “[The top isn’t in] until everyone agrees that actually this is what you ought to be doing. And I just don't see a frenzy in the Western gold bullion space.”
Asked about the bear case for gold and Bitcoin, Morris pointed to their fundamental drivers as reasons why they’re both good long-term bets.
“Both of them could, of course, collapse,” he said, tongue-in-cheek. “If every country was managed like Switzerland, there would indeed be no purpose to have gold or Bitcoin. If we all balanced the budgets and didn't have debt problems, and we didn't have asset confiscation and these sorts of things, they would serve no purpose. They'd just sit in the background for wedding rings, and intellectual curiosity in the case of blockchain or Bitcoin."
"If [former Prime Minister of Singapore] Lee Kuan Yew was in charge of the Western world, and Japan, and frankly most other emerging markets too, then there'd be no need for Bitcoin and gold,” Morris added. “Unfortunately, Lee Kuan Yew is pretty singular, and dead.”
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