The Three Hours That Erased $550 Billion
Metals opened the week down in a hole, with gold slipping 1.55% and silver sliding 2.75% early during the Asian session, wiping out about $470 billion and $101 billion in market value, respectively.
The losses deepened from there as by mid-morning in India, Comex gold futures were down 2.11% at $4,197.40 an ounce, while silver had dropped 3.59% to $62.47. That leaves gold nearly 25% below its record near $5,590, set earlier this year on Jan. 28.
Silver’s slide was steeper in percentage terms, as it usually is, but that is also because the metal trades in a thinner market.
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On paper, the weekend should have helped, but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC yesterday that Tehran is ready for a “doomsday” war if attacked, after it came to light that President Donald Trump was looking to renew airstrikes on the country after the midterm elections.
But the geopolitical premium flowed into oil, not metals, as Brent crude climbed 2.52% to $107 a barrel, something that feeds inflation. Inflation, in turn, feeds rate expectations and the CME Fedwatch tool showed a 68.1% probability of a 25 basis point Federal Reserve hike in October.
The U.S. Dollar Index also hit 101.39, a two-month high, and 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields sat at 5.20% and 5.51%.
Lastly, because gold pays no interest, every tick higher in yields raises the cost of holding it. Peter Schiff made the same point, writing:
Gold and silver are being dragged down by rising bond yields. The impact of rising yields on the economy, federal budget deficits, and inflation is bullish for gold and silver. Buy now.
Bitcoin.com News reported last week that bond yields hit a 24-year high, with Schiff, Bill Ackman and Arthur Hayes offering competing explanations for why.
Where Was Digital Gold in All of This?
Here is the part bitcoin bulls do not love, given the “digital gold” pitch rests on bitcoin catching capital when traditional safe havens wobble, but Monday showed no such rotation.
In fact, bitcoin slid to an intraday low of $82,780, a 2.7% drop over the same hours metals were bleeding. At press time, $BTC is trading above $83,000.
Tokenized bullion moved in lockstep with PAX Gold (PAXG), a token backed by physical gold, falling from roughly $4,276 to $4,186 across the session, so crypto traders holding gold onchain took the same hit as futures traders.
Through it all, U.S. spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) pulled in $2.39 billion last week, the biggest weekly haul of 2026. Moreover, $BTC climbed back toward $85,000 over the weekend, but none of that held once yields bit.
Bitwise flagged this pattern where institutions see bitcoin as gold-like in theory but allocate to it like tech, such that when yields climb, both gold and growth assets lose appeal, and bitcoin trades with the second group.