Most Influential: Peter Schiff

AI Summary3 min read

TL;DR

In 2025, gold surged over 50%, outperforming bitcoin and validating Peter Schiff's warnings about monetary debasement. While gold captured investor attention, the market continues to evolve between traditional safe havens and digital alternatives.

Key Takeaways

•Gold delivered over 50% returns in 2025, marking one of its strongest performances in over a decade and validating concerns about monetary debasement.
•Peter Schiff's gold advocacy was vindicated as gold significantly outperformed bitcoin, delivering 8 times better returns in 2025.
•The market narrative continues to evolve between traditional safe havens like gold and digital alternatives, despite gold's current dominance.
•Various crypto projects like GoPlus and Exodus are expanding their offerings, with GoPlus generating significant revenue and Exodus launching a USD-backed stablecoin.

In 2025, gold has emerged as the standout asset, delivering returns of more than 50%, marking one of its strongest performances in over a decade. The precious metal became the clear winner of what mainstream commentators dubbed the “debasement trade,” a viral term that captured growing investor anxiety over global debt levels, excessive borrowing, and the weakening U.S. dollar, which suffered its worst year in many. By October, gold’s rally reached record highs, coinciding with a blow-off top at almost $4,400 an ounce, now stabilizing around the $4,000-per-ounce level.

This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.

This environment validated long-standing warnings about monetary debasement, a concern often voiced by the bitcoin community. Yet ironically, it was gold, not bitcoin, that captured investors’ attention and capital this year. Gold has so far delivered an 8 times better return than bitcoin in 2025. Peter Schiff, the outspoken gold advocate and notorious bitcoin critic, has been vindicated by the market’s performance, cementing his stance after years of skepticism towards digital assets.

While Schiff continues to champion gold’s role as the ultimate store of value, the broader market narrative has evolved between traditional safe havens and digital alternatives.

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.

Exodus is launching a fully reserved, USD-backed stablecoin with MoonPay to power self-custodial payments in its crypto wallet app.
The stablecoin will support Exodus Pay, a new feature enabling users to spend and send digital dollars without relying on centralized exchanges.
With the launch, Exodus joins a short list of public companies, including PayPal and Circle, backing stablecoin products.

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