Crypto Market Today: Bitcoin-gold ratio drops to lowest since January 2024

AI Summary5 min read

TL;DR

Bitcoin's price remains volatile while its ratio to gold hits a low since January 2024, indicating gold's safe-haven appeal. Negative funding rates for major tokens suggest short position buildup, and Yearn Finance suffers another exploit impacting its YFI token.

Key Takeaways

  • Bitcoin's ratio to gold dropped to its lowest since January 2024, reflecting investor preference for gold as a safe-haven asset amid economic uncertainty.
  • Negative funding rates for tokens like BNB, XRP, SOL, TRX, and DOGE indicate increased short positions in the futures market, with DOGE and TRX showing particular buildup.
  • Yearn Finance's YFI token fell nearly 6% after a $300,000 exploit from a legacy smart contract, its second attack this month, though current vaults were unaffected.
  • Bitcoin's price volatility has stalled, with implied volatility indicators showing no signs of a renewed upswing, while U.S. Treasury volatility declines may support risk assets.
  • Meme coins like Dogecoin and Shiba Inu continue to underperform due to de-risking in speculative assets, despite increased whale accumulation and regulatory developments.
Stacked gold bars (Scottsdale Mint/Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk)
Bitcoin rose against the dollar on Thursday, while falling against gold. (Scottsdale Mint/Unsplash/Modified by CoinDesk)

What to know:

  • Bitcoin's price remains volatile, trading between $86,000 and $90,000, while its ratio to gold hit a low not seen since January 2024.
  • Funding rates for several major tokens have turned negative, indicating a buildup of short positions in the futures market.
  • Yearn Finance's YFI token dropped nearly 6% after the yield aggregator suffered a $300,000 exploit from a legacy smart contract, its second attack this month.
  • Bitcoin's price remains volatile, trading between $86,000 and $90,000, while its ratio to gold hit a low not seen since January 2024.
  • Funding rates for several major tokens have turned negative, indicating a buildup of short positions in the futures market.
  • Yearn Finance's YFI token dropped nearly 6% after the yield aggregator suffered a $300,000 exploit from a legacy smart contract, its second attack this month.

Bitcoin's BTC$88,140.62 underperformance relative to gold, to which it is often compared, continues as its price in dollars lacks clear directional bias, trading back and forth between $86,000 and $90,000. It's currently up 1.2% since midnight UTC against the greenback.

The ratio between the price of bitcoin and gold, however, has dropped to 20.18, the lowest since Jan. 1, 2024, according to data source TradingView. The sustained decline shows investors still favor the precious metal as the preferred safe-haven asset amid what some see as fiscal imprudence across the advanced world and talk about Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts.

The ratio may improve later Thursday should U.S. inflation data come in lower than expected. That may increase rate-cut expectations and spur risk taking in financial markets.

Derivatives Positioning

  • The downtrend in BTC's 30-day implied volatility, represented by Volmex's BVIV index, has stalled at around 50%. However, there are no signs of a renewed upswing, meaning traders aren't expecting a pick up in volatility as of now.
  • The MOVE index, the equivalent for U.S. Treasury notes, has dropped to 62.73, the lowest since October. A decline in Treasury market volatility typically bodes well for risk assets.
  • Among major tokens, SOL TRX and DOGE have seen an increase in open interest (OI) in futures market.
  • Funding rates for BNB, XRP, SOL, TRX and DOGE have flipped negative. The combination of an increase in OI and negative rates in DOGE and TRX indicate a build up of short positions.
  • On Deribit, risk reversals continue to show bias for BTC and ETH puts, indicating persistent downside fears.
  • Block flows featured call calendar spreads and strangle in BTC and put spreads and strangles in ETH.

Token Talk

  • Yearn Finance, one of DeFi’s earliest and most recognizable yield aggregators, suffered another exploit this week, with attackers draining about $300,000 from a legacy smart contract.
  • The vulnerability was in a contract tied to iEarn, an early version of the protocol dating back nearly six years. Security firm PeckShield flagged the exploit, noting that the attacker swapped the stolen funds for 103 ETH, worth around $290,000.
  • Yearn responded shortly after, clarifying that the attack did not impact current vaults or contracts. “The problem is exclusive to iEarn and does not impact current Yearn contracts or vaults” the team posted on X.
  • This is the second exploit Yearn has suffered in the past month. Earlier in December, attackers made off with $9 million from a separate vulnerability.
  • Yearn’s YFI token dropped nearly 6% after the exploit and is underperforming the wider market. Total value locked on the yield aggregator plunged more than $50 million to $560 million since the first exploit, data shows.

  • As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
  • GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
  • Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
  • Coinbase rose as much as 4.6% after unveiling a broad product expansion including stock trading and AI-powered tools.
  • Analysts from JPMorgan, Citi, and Clear Street said the roadmap could expand Coinbase’s market and user engagement.
  • Wall Street price targets range from $244 to $505, reflecting diverging views on Coinbase’s ability to execute its “Everything Exchange” strategy.
  • The shares were recently price at $249.16.

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