The Anchor of Liquidity: Analyzing the Divergence of $BTC, Gold, and Tech Stocks in 2025

My deity of worship is embodied as adorable plush toys. Every year from January to February, when I go skiing in Hokkaido, I pray to the goddess “Sorrow Cloud” who governs snowfall. Ideal powder snow requires specific conditions: light wind at night, temperatures between -5°C and -10°C, so that new snow can tightly bond with the old snow.

Sometimes, “Sorrow Cloud” leaves on clear, cold nights. The snow layer undergoes repeated freeze-thaw cycles, forming fragile ice crystal layers that become hidden weak points. Once the skier’s weight triggers energy conduction, it can cause a deadly avalanche. The only way to understand snow layer structure is to dig deep pits and study the snowpack history over different periods.

In financial markets, our way of studying history is analyzing charts, examining the interactions between historical events and price fluctuations. Today, I want to discuss the relationship between $BTC, gold, stocks (specifically large tech stocks in the Nasdaq 100), and dollar liquidity.

Those who are skeptical of cryptocurrencies, believe in gold, or are at the top of the financial world and firmly believe that “stocks are suitable for long-term holding,” are rejoicing that $BTC is expected to be the worst-performing major asset class in 2025. Gold believers ask: if $BTC is truly a “protest tool” against the existing order, why does it underperform gold? Stock advocates mock: claiming $BTC is a high-beta variant of Nasdaq, yet it hasn’t even achieved that by 2025.

I will present a series of charts with personal insights. In my view, $BTC’s performance fully aligns with its “characteristics”—it declines as fiat currency (especially USD) liquidity decreases. Because in 2025, the credit pulse brought by “peace under American rule” is the most influential market factor.

The surge in gold prices is due to sovereign nations that are insensitive to price hoarding large quantities. They worry about the safety of holding US Treasuries—2022 US freezing of Russian assets, and recent actions against Venezuela, have intensified this concern. As a result, gold has become an alternative to US Treasuries as a reserve asset.

Finally, the AI bubble and related industries will not disappear. In fact, Trump must increase government support for the AI industry because AI is the biggest driver of US GDP growth. This means that even if the growth rate of USD issuance slows, the Nasdaq index can still rise because Trump has “nationalized” the AI industry.

Those who have studied China’s capital markets know that in the early stages of industry nationalization, related stocks tend to perform well. But if the price trends of $BTC, gold, and stocks in 2025 confirm my model, then moving forward, I will still focus on the fluctuations of dollar liquidity.

My prediction is: the Trump administration will expand credit to boost the economy’s “hot operation,” increasing the likelihood of Republican re-election in November. USD credit expansion will occur through three pathways: central bank balance sheet expansion, commercial banks increasing loans to “strategic industries,” and “printing money” to lower mortgage rates.

First, compare the returns of $BTC, gold, and Nasdaq in the first year of Trump’s second term (2025), and their relationship with changes in USD liquidity. The assumption is: if USD liquidity declines, these assets’ prices should also fall.

However, the reality is that gold and stock prices rise, and only $BTC’s performance aligns with expectations—it’s a complete mess. Next, I will explain why, in a liquidity downturn, gold and stocks can rise against the trend.

My cryptocurrency investment began with gold. From 2010 to 2011, as the Fed kept expanding quantitative easing, I bought physical gold coins in Hong Kong. Ultimately, I learned a lesson in position management: in 2013, to arbitrage on exchanges, I had to sell gold at a loss and buy $BTC.

After all this, I still hold physical gold in global vaults, and gold and silver mining stocks dominate my stock portfolio. Readers might wonder: as a believer in Satoshi, why do I still hold gold?

The reason is that we are in the early stage of global central banks selling US debt and increasing gold holdings. Moreover, countries are increasingly using gold to settle trade deficits. In short, I buy gold because central banks are buying.

Gold, as the “real money” of human civilization, has a 10,000-year history. Therefore, if central bank managers do not trust the fiat currency system dominated by the dollar, they will never choose $BTC as a reserve asset, but will choose gold instead.

If gold’s proportion in foreign exchange reserves can return to the levels of the 1980s, its price could rise to about $12,000. Before you dismiss this as a “fantasy,” look at the data.

In the fiat currency system, the traditional view is that gold is an “inflation hedge,” and its price should track official CPI inflation data of various countries. Historical charts show that since the 1930s, gold prices have generally tracked inflation indices. But after 2008, especially post-2022, gold’s price growth has significantly outpaced inflation.

If gold is truly in a bubble, retail investors would flock in. The most popular way to trade gold is via ETFs, with “SPDR Gold Shares (GLD US)” being the largest. When retail investors go all-in, the number of GLD shares in circulation increases.

To compare across time, we need to divide the number of GLD shares by the physical gold price. The chart shows this ratio is continuously declining, not rising—meaning the real gold speculation frenzy has yet to arrive.

Since ordinary retail investors haven’t driven up the gold price, who are the “price-insensitive buyers”? The answer is central banks worldwide. Over the past two decades, two key events have made “money managers” realize that the dollar is no longer a reliable reserve currency.

In 2008, US financial giants triggered a global deflation panic. Unlike 1929, the Fed abandoned its duty to maintain dollar purchasing power, choosing to “print money” to rescue some large financial institutions. This marked a turning point in the proportion of US debt and gold holdings—US debt peaked, gold holdings bottomed.

In 2022, Biden froze Russian US debt holdings. Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal and is one of the world’s biggest commodity exporters. If the US dares to infringe on Russia’s property rights, other weaker or resource-rich countries might also act.

Thus, other countries accelerated their gold accumulation. Central banks, as buyers, are insensitive to prices: after all, if assets are frozen, the loss is 100%; compared to that, buying gold to avoid counterparty risk is just a matter of cost.

The fundamental reason for strong demand for gold among countries is that global trade deficits are increasingly settled with gold. By December 2025, the US trade deficit sharply narrowed, proving that gold is re-emerging as a true global reserve currency—more than 100% of the change in US trade deficit is due to increased gold exports.

Market analysis indicates: “US goods import-export gap decreased by 11% from the previous month, down to $52.8 billion.” This deficit scale is the lowest since June 2020. From August to December, US exports grew by 3%, reaching $289.3 billion, mainly driven by non-monetary gold exports.

The flow of gold is: US exports gold to Switzerland, where it is refined and cast into various gold bars, then shipped to other countries. The main buyers are China, India, and other emerging economies—adept at producing physical goods or being major commodity exporters.

Their produced goods ultimately flow into the US, while gold flows to more “productive” regions globally. Against the backdrop of declining USD liquidity, rising gold prices are precisely because countries are accelerating the return to gold standard.

Every era has its hot tech stocks. In the 1920s, it was radio manufacturer RCA; in the 60s and 70s, it was mainframe computer maker IBM; today, it’s AI supercomputing companies and chip manufacturers.

Humans are inherently optimistic and love to envision a bright future. When liquidity is abundant and financing costs are low, betting on the future becomes easy. Investors are willing to invest “worthless” cash now to gain larger future cash flows, pushing up tech stock P/E ratios.

$BTC is a “money technology.” Its value is directly related to the degree of fiat currency devaluation. The invention of proof-of-work blockchain technology created a Byzantine fault-tolerant mechanism, ensuring $BTC’s value remains above zero.

But to bring $BTC close to $100,000, fiat currency must continue to devalue. After the 2008 global financial crisis, USD supply surged, which is the direct reason for the “asymptotic” rise of $BTC. Therefore, my conclusion is: when USD liquidity expands, $BTC and Nasdaq will rise.

However, recently, $BTC’s price has diverged from the Nasdaq index. I believe the reason Nasdaq in 2025 did not decline with USD liquidity is that both China and the US have “nationalized” the AI industry.

AI “tech gurus” have instilled a concept in the leaders of the two largest economies: AI can solve everything—reducing labor costs to zero, curing cancer, increasing productivity, democratizing creativity, and more importantly, enabling one country to dominate globally in military power.

China has long embraced this technological future, aligning with its top-down five-year plan setting development goals. In the US, this “policy-driven investment analysis” is still new. Industrial policy is actually a “joint choice” of both countries, just with different propaganda.

Trump has been “convinced” by AI, and “winning in AI” has become a key part of his economic policy. The US government has effectively “nationalized” the AI industry: through executive orders and government investments, weakening free-market signals, causing capital to pour into all AI-related fields regardless of actual return on equity.

This is precisely why, in 2025, Nasdaq and $BTC diverged and outperformed, defying the trend of USD liquidity. Whether or not there is a bubble, increased spending to “win the AI race” is driving US economic growth.

Trump promises to keep the economy “hot,” so even if, in hindsight, these expenditures have low return on capital, he will not stop now. US tech investors should be cautious about their “expectations.”

US industrial policies aimed at “winning the AI race” could very well cause investors’ capital to “go down the drain.” Trump’s political goals will eventually conflict with the interests of shareholders of those “strategic enterprises.” Chinese stock investors have learned this lesson painfully.

Confucius said: “Learn from history.” But judging by the excellent performance of the Nasdaq, US investors apparently have not learned. A series of employment and manufacturing index charts clearly show that Nasdaq’s rise is the result of US government “endorsement.”

Therefore, even if overall USD credit growth stalls or contracts, the AI industry can still receive all the funding needed to “win.” This explains the divergence in 2025 between Nasdaq and USD liquidity, with Nasdaq outperforming $BTC.

I believe the AI bubble has not yet burst. This “outperformance of $BTC” will be the “normal” in global capital markets until circumstances change—most likely when, as some market forecasts suggest, in 2026 the Democrats control the House of Representatives, and possibly win the presidency in 2028.

If the Republicans are “progressive,” then the Democrats are “conservative.” Since gold and Nasdaq are “booming,” how can $BTC “regain vitality”? The answer is: USD liquidity must expand. I believe USD liquidity will expand in 2026, and I will now discuss specific pathways.

I think this year’s (2026) USD liquidity expansion will rely on three pillars: the Fed expanding its balance sheet through “money printing”; commercial banks increasing loans to strategic industries; and the Fed “printing money” to lower mortgage rates.

Charts show that in 2025, due to quantitative tightening, the Fed’s balance sheet shrank continuously. In December 2025, QT ended, and the Fed announced its latest “money printing plan”—“Reserve Management Purchases.”

The chart clearly shows the Fed’s balance sheet bottomed out in December 2025. According to this plan, the Fed will inject at least $40 billion of liquidity into the market each month; as US government financing needs increase, this purchase scale will also grow.

Another chart shows weekly data on US bank system loan growth, titled “Other Deposits and Liabilities.” Starting in Q4 2025, banks began increasing lending. The process of bank lending is essentially “creating deposits out of thin air”—a process of “money creation.”

Large banks are eager to lend directly to enterprises supported by the US government—for example, some banks launched $1.5 trillion in loan facilities. The specific model is: the government injects capital or provides procurement agreements to enterprises, which then apply for loans from banks to expand production.

Government “endorsement” reduces default risk, so banks are willing to “create money” to finance these strategic industries. This is very similar to China’s credit creation model—credit creation shifts from the central bank to commercial banks, at least initially increasing the velocity of money, pushing nominal GDP above trend.

The US will continue to demonstrate its military influence, and producing weapons of mass destruction requires financing from the banking system. This is why bank credit growth in 2026 will show a long-term upward trend.

Trump, with a background in real estate, understands project financing well. Recently, he issued a new policy requiring the US government to support Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to use their balance sheet funds to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities.

Before the directive, this money was idle on the balance sheet, so the policy will directly increase USD liquidity. If this policy proves effective, Trump is likely to introduce similar measures further.

Lowering mortgage rates to boost the housing market will allow many Americans to mortgage at record high home equity. This “wealth effect” will make ordinary people feel satisfied with the economy on election day. For us risk asset holders, the most important thing is that this will create more credit funds for buying various financial assets.

$BTC’s price curve and USD liquidity curve nearly bottomed at the same time. As mentioned earlier, with USD liquidity expanding significantly, $BTC’s price will also rise. Forget the sluggish performance of 2025—the liquidity then was simply insufficient to support a crypto portfolio.

But we must not draw the wrong conclusion from $BTC the poor performance of 2025: its price trend has always been closely related to liquidity changes, both in the past and now.

I am a bold speculator. Although my managed fund is nearly fully invested, given my firm optimism about USD liquidity expansion, I still hope to further increase my risk exposure.

Therefore, I have established long positions in Strategy and Metaplanet, gaining leveraged exposure to $BTC without trading perpetual contracts or options derivatives. I divide Metaplanet’s stock price by the yen-denominated $BTC price, and Strategy’s stock price by the USD-denominated $BTC price.

The results show that the “BTC ratio” of these two stocks is at a low point over the past two years and has fallen sharply from its peak in mid-2025. If $BTC’s price can rebound to $110,000, investors will be more inclined to indirectly position through these stocks again.

Because of the inherent leverage in these companies’ capital structures, during $BTC rallies, their stock prices will increase more than $BTC itself. Additionally, we are continuing to increase our holdings of Zcash.

The departure of developers from related projects is not necessarily bad news. I firmly believe that these developers, in independent profitable entities, will develop better and more influential products. I am glad to have the opportunity to buy at low prices from “panic sellers.”

Fellow speculators, forge ahead and climb upward. The outside world is full of risks—be sure to protect yourself. May peace be with you, and salute to the goddess “Sorrow Cloud”!

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