When missiles started flying in the Iran conflict, investors didn’t run to gold like they normally would. Instead, they quietly started buying Bitcoin, and Wall Street noticed. Analysts at J.P. Morgan, led by senior executive Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, published a report this week showing a clear split between Bitcoin and gold funds since the Iran war began. BlackRock’s bitcoin fund pulled in new money worth about 1.5% of its total holdings, while the world’s biggest gold fund lost roughly 2.7% of its holdings as investors cashed out. This basically wiped out the head start gold funds had built over bitcoin funds earlier in the year, though gold still had a stronger run in late 2025.
Big Investors Are Still Cautious on Bitcoin
Despite the recent success of Bitcoin, large institutional investors have remained cautious. J. P. Morgan noted that since last October, hedge funds and big players have been cutting back on bitcoin and moving into gold. Bets against BlackRock’s bitcoin fund went up during that time, while bets against the gold fund went down.
The options market—where traders buy insurance against price drops—told a similar story. Traders were paying more to protect against a bitcoin price fall than a gold price fall, a first for a sustained stretch of time. Analysts see this as a sign that big investors are getting smarter about managing Bitcoin risk rather than just betting on it going up.
Gold Has Its Own Warning Signs
Even though investors favored gold for much of the past several months, J. P. Morgan spotted trouble under the surface. Expected price swings for gold were rising faster than for Bitcoin, and fewer investors were actually participating in gold trading—both signs of potential instability.
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Bitcoin, on the other hand, showed calmer price swings. This is something analysts credit to more institutional ownership and a deeper, more liquid market. J.P. Morgan kept its long-term bitcoin price target at $266,000, based on a comparison with gold that accounts for how volatile each asset is. Bitcoin was trading around $70,500 when the report came out.
