Bitcoin Outpaces Gold By 2022, Analyst Calms Market Fears

The analyst says BTC’s decline reflects prices moving ahead of ETF-driven gains, not a broken long-term thesis.

Bitcoin (BTC) is trading around $90,000 on January 28, 2026, after several days of choppy price action that has left many traders uneasy.

However, ETF analyst Eric Balchunas has highlighted the cryptocurrency’s multi-year gains compared to traditional assets, arguing that recent frustrations ignore the broader picture.

Bitcoin’s Long-Term Benefits Confront Short-Term Concerns

Balchunas wrote in X that Bitcoin is up about 429% since 2022, compared to about 350% for silver, 177% for gold, and 140% for the Nasdaq-100, arguing that the current decline looks mild when viewed against those returns.

“In other words Bitcoin hit everything so bad in ’23 and ’24 (which ppl seem to forget) that those other assets haven’t recovered even after their biggest year and BTC is in a coma,” the analyst said.

In his book, Balchunas tracked Bitcoin’s strong performance in the period before and after BlackRock filed for a Bitcoin ETF in 2023. He said prices are moving ahead of the “inventory” story, leaving the market needing time while the real discovery plays out.

“People see one red candle and forget what that chart looks like,” replied one user, echoing a common sentiment among long-term holders.

Others took a similar tone. Dan, a long-time crypto analyst, wrote that impatience during low or falling markets often separates price-responsive traders from those with a fundamentals-based view, something he says has happened repeatedly since 2011.

The backdrop is a market that has struggled to find direction in recent weeks, with Bitcoin repeatedly failing to break through the resistance between $94,000 and $98,000 and falling below $90,000. Analysts cited patterns like the bear flag and a failed head and shoulders setup, with a target as low as $70,000 if key support levels fail.

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At the time of writing, CoinGecko data showed Bitcoin was up about 1% in the past 24 hours but down about 6% over the past two weeks and over 13% over the past year. The stock briefly dropped to around $86,000 earlier this week before rebounding, and resistance is still clustered around the $90,000 to $92,000 area. During that time, its dominance is close to 57%, which suggests that altcoins did not perform very well during the draw.

Broader risk-off conditions, such as uncertainty about US monetary policy and large liquidations in derivatives markets, contributed to some of the weakness surrounding BTC.

Balchunas questioned whether Bitcoin needed a new narrative, pointing to debt growth and deleveraging as ongoing themes, and added that easier access through ETFs means allocation decisions can now be made over time rather than sudden speculation.

For now, Bitcoin’s chart may look uncomfortable in the short term, but zooming in on the picture may help explain why some analysts see the current lull as a collapse and as a pause after a brutal run.