China's Central Bank Extends Gold Buying to 24 Straight Months as Bitcoin Falls Below $75,000

What this means

The two assets have different buyers. Gold has a large official buyer that does not need to sell and adds more when prices fall, as China did through a 7% monthly decline. Bitcoin's marginal holders are leveraged and depend on liquidity. They sell when expected rates rise and the dollar firms, and they cannot count on any buyer to absorb those sales. For readers who hold monetary metals as protection against the policy path, the official bid matters most. Beijing keeps converting reserves into an asset that cannot be frozen by a foreign government, and that conversion continues regardless of short-term rate expectations. The desk's read is that if the Federal Reserve raises rates in December, gold holds above its October low better than bitcoin does over the following weeks, and bitcoin keeps moving with the Nasdaq. That depends on official buying continuing at the October pace. A month in which bitcoin rises while the Nasdaq falls would contradict this read. So would a pause in Chinese purchases.