Bitcoin Is Beating Gold During War, Peter Schiff Pushes Back

• Bitcoin gained about 7.75% during the U.S.–Iran conflict, outperforming major assets.
• Traditional safe havens struggled, with gold down 5.5% and silver falling over 13%.
• Peter Schiff says the conflict could accelerate global de-dollarization trends.

More than fifteen days into the US-Iran war, and the numbers tell a story that would have been unthinkable two years ago. Bitcoin is up 7.75%. Gold is down 5.5%. The S&P 500 has shed 3.85%. Silver has collapsed 13.22%. The Nasdaq is off 3%.

The crypto market has quietly added $240 billion in value during one of the most intense geopolitical flashpoints in recent memory. The asset that was supposed to crash hardest in a war is the only major asset finishing green.

Gold at $5,000: Peter Schiff Sees an Opportunity Nobody Is Taking

Gold’s pullback to $5,000 support amid a war has bewildered traditional macro investors. Peter Schiff, a gold advocate, argued on X that the selloff shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the war actually means for the global financial order.

His thesis: the US-Iran conflict is not bearish for gold. It is accelerating the de-dollarisation trend that was already quietly reshaping how central banks and sovereign wealth funds hold reserves. Countries watching the US deploy economic and military power simultaneously are quietly asking the same question: Do we want our reserves held in dollars?

The debate around gold got sharper when Schiff sparred publicly with Tim Draper, an American VC investor, who said he prefers Bitcoin over gold because gold fails as a medium of exchange. You cannot, Draper said, shave gold off a bar to order a coffee. 

Schiff’s counterargument was that gold can be tokenised, thereby solving the medium-of-exchange problem entirely.

The Gold vs Bitcoin Framework Going Forward

The most important shift right now is not the price. It is the narrative.

Bitcoin holding above $73,000 while equities and traditional safe havens sell off is the clearest real-world evidence yet that institutional positioning has fundamentally changed the asset’s response to macro shocks. This is the first major geopolitical crisis where institutions have deep hands in Bitcoin. That floor now exists, and the price action since the war began is the proof.

The most relevant comparison is not last week. It is gold after the ETF launched in 2004, when a $2.5 trillion asset grew to around $35 trillion over twenty years. Bitcoin today has roughly the same market cap as gold did then.

Bitcoin ETFs launched in 2024. The institutions are allocating, and experts say that the next phase has begun.

Related: ​Strategy’s Bitcoin Holdings Approach 740,000 as Analysts Point to Possible 30,000 BTC Purchase