According to Mike McGlone, Bloomberg’s senior strategist, Bitcoin’s golden decade may be fading into metallic mediocrity. Represented by the XBT/XAU chart, the Bitcoin-to-gold ratio just dropped to 20.18 — almost exactly where it was five years ago.
After reaching 40 in late 2024, the benchmark has been cut in half, reviving fears of a complete return to the 10 zone, which was last seen during crypto’s darkest consolidation phase.
McGlone has been sounding this alarm for months. His core thesis is that Bitcoin had massive overperformance after 2020 due to liquidity-driven hype, and that excess is now bleeding out.
In this case, the “5-Year Curse” is a warning to macro allocators who are still clinging to the digital gold narrative because the value has remained the same for five years. For McGlone, the next most likely thing to happen is a return to 10 — or another 50% crash for Bitcoin vs. gold.
This is not an abstract theory in dollar terms either. He notes that Bitcoin’s yearly chart shows a failure to break $100,000 in 2025, a rollover below the 200-day moving average, and a weak bounce into early 2026. These factors align with a potential breakdown.
He views this as a setup for a full mean reversion, with $50,000 as the baseline retrace and $10,000 as a possible overshoot, particularly if risk assets deflate post-inflation.
Key trigger? Equities
Over the past decade, Bitcoin’s alpha has correlated with a rising S&P 500 and suppressed volatility. However, the volatility index has remained low since late 2022, and McGlone warns that an increase in equity risk could cause a major decline in the beta of speculative cryptocurrencies.
The real takeaway is that Bitcoin’s chart against gold is no longer bullish, but symmetrical. In this context, symmetry may mean another 50% drop before the bleeding stops.