Gold has surged to new record highs, Bitcoin (BTC) has swung sharply, and oil keeps reacting to headlines since U.S. President Donald Trump began his second term in January 2025.

Over the past year, gold has jumped roughly 80%, while Bitcoin is down over 25% despite trading as high as $124,000 last October. Oil, on the other hand, has hovered near recent highs but continues to move on geopolitical developments.

Together, the moves show how less predictable markets have become. Instead of following cycles, assets are increasingly reacting to politics, inflation worries, and shifting expectations for growth, forcing investors to rethink what counts as a safe haven, a risky trade, or a macro signal.

Gold: The Classic Hedge

Gold has been one of the clearest winners of the past year, rising about 80%. The metal traded near $2,941 per ounce a year ago and now sits around $5,300, as investors increasingly turned to it for protection against inflation, geopolitical tensions, and general uncertainty.

During the year, gold fell as low as $2,857 and hit an all-time high above $5,500. Jonathan Rose, CEO of BlockTrust IRA, said the rally shows how investors tend to return to fundamentals when uncertainty rises.

“If there’s one thing the current administration’s ‘America First ‘ agenda has proven, it’s that the market eventually stops trading on ‘vibes’ and starts trading on plumbing,” Rose said. He added that gold’s resilience stems from its role as an asset not dependent on leverage or liquidity cycles.

“It’s held by central banks and ‘old money’ that doesn’t panic-sell to meet a 4:00 PM margin call,” Rose said. “While the digital world was reeling from the largest leveraged liquidation event on record ($20 billion wiped out in a single cascade), gold acted as the asset of last resort.”

Meanwhile, Sid Powell, CEO of Maple, said the metal’s performance reflects a familiar pattern during uncertain periods.

“In uncertain political and macro environments, gold has done what it always does – steadily attracting demand as investors look for protection against inflation risk, policy shifts, and instability,” Powell explained.

And this interest in gold has also shown up on-chain, with tokenized gold assets surpassing $4 billion in market value earlier this year as investors sought exposure to the metal through digital rails.

Bitcoin: The Volatile One

If gold has delivered steady gains, Bitcoin has delivered volatility. In the year since Trump took office again, Bitcoin has fallen around 25%. It traded near $95,740 a year ago and now sits around $69,000 – a far choppier performance than gold.

And the path has been anything but linear. Over the past year, BTC rallied to an all-time high on Inauguration Day, reaching $108,500, dropped to a low of $74,000 in April 2025, and then rallied to a new high of $124,773 in October. This solidified its status as a highly volatile asset after being touted as a “safe” hedge against inflation for the first half of 2025.

For much of the year, BTC and gold traded closely together, both benefiting from inflation concerns and political uncertainty. But that correlation weakened in recent months. While gold continued climbing to record highs, Bitcoin pulled back sharply from its peak.

The divergence only accelerated after the Oct. 10 crash, when roughly $20 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated – the largest derivatives wipeout in crypto history. The event not only drained liquidity but also marked a turning point for crypto market structure.

Marissa Kim, Head of Asset Management at Abra, said the shift reflects broader macro dynamics rather than crypto-specific factors. “Since Trump took office, asset performance has been shaped less by traditional fundamentals and more by a breakdown in old monetary and market cycles.”

She said Bitcoin initially moved in tandem with gold and other assets as investors piled into what she described as the broader “debasement trade,” driven by inflation fears and uncertainty about the future monetary order.

“While many ‘debasement trade’ assets have performed extremely well… BTC and crypto performance has lagged,” Kim said.

Oil

Unlike gold’s steady rise or Bitcoin’s volatility, oil has mostly been moving on geopolitical news, experts said, making it a bit more predictable.

Prices have stayed near recent highs, with U.S. crude trading in the low-to-mid $60s per barrel and Brent crude hovering around the upper-$60s to around $70, as markets weighed the likelihood of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal and the risk of supply disruptions in the Middle East.

“Oil’s a different story, as it’s been a mix of geopolitics, supply constraints, and growth expectations,” Arrash Yasavolian, founder and CEO of Vanta, told The Defiant. “However, it got swept into the same reflation tape at different points.”

He said the recent swings show how investors are once again treating assets based on their specific roles rather than broad macro narratives. “And now with unrest in Venezuela and Iran, oil feels much more volatile and less safe than gold,” Yasavolian added.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s recent proposal to raise tariffs to 15% after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled his emergency tariffs illegal has added new concerns about global growth.

USD: The Silent Influencer

While gold, Bitcoin, and oil have drawn most of the attention, the U.S. dollar has quietly shaped the environment behind their moves.

The U.S. Dollar Index is down around 8% over the past year, falling from above 106 last February to around 97.7, and earlier this year touched its lowest level in about four years. A weaker dollar tends to support commodities like gold and oil and can also make alternative assets like Bitcoin look more attractive.

Analysts have tied the decline to a mix of tariff threats, fiscal concerns, and expectations that interest rates could move lower, factors that have also coincided with investors rotating into hard assets.

In that sense, the dollar hasn’t been the headline story, but it has influenced how other markets behave.

When looking at the entire picture, the moves across gold, Bitcoin, oil, and the dollar suggest markets are becoming more fragmented. It also highlights how each asset is increasingly reacting to its own drivers rather than a single macro narrative.