Both precious metals erased billions of dollars from their respective market caps in just one trading day.
Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry are often blamed for being too volatile and immature for legacy investors, a claim that proved true once again at the end of the business week.
At the same time, safe haven assets like gold and silver are praised for their stability, especially in times of uncertainty. That’s not what happened on Thursday and Friday, though.
Double-Digit Precious Metal Crashes
2025 became the year of the precious metals, and the beginning of 2026 only solidified this claim. Let’s take gold, for example. It entered the new year at $4,300/oz, but the growing geopolitical tension, as well as the declining value of the greenback, pushed it to consecutive all-time highs, the latest coming on Thursday at $5,600. This meant a whopping 30% increase in just a month.
Silver’s performance was even more impressive within the same timeframe – a 70% surge from a 2026 entry price of $72 to $122 peak on January 29.
What happened in the following 24 hours, though, was quite the opposite and brutal. These overly praised (and perhaps overbought) precious metals slumped by double digits. Gold went down to $4,700, meaning a 16% decline in a day, while silver essentially erased all yearly gains in a 40% drop to $73. Although both rebounded to $4,900 and $85, respectively, they still ended the trading day deep in the red, showing untypical volatility.
The reasons behind this calamity are still debated, with some arguing about a long-overdue profit-taking, while others blame Trump’s nominee for the next Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh. Nevertheless, the reality is that the two largest assets by market cap erased roughly $7 billion from their market caps in just a day, an amount that is more than two times larger than the entire crypto industry.
Gold and Silver erased $6.7 Trillion from their market cap in 30 hours.#Bitcoin MCap is $1.64 Trillion.
“We are so early” is an understatement. pic.twitter.com/ZQhxlwEH0F
— Davinci Jeremie (@Davincij15) January 30, 2026
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Not Just BTC, Huh?
For years, crypto critics have accused the industry and its market leader in particular of being too volatile and unstable for legacy investors. We are not saying that they are entirely wrong, as BTC just dumped from over $90,000 to $81,000 in about 24 hours as well. However, such fluctuations are more typical for an asset class that has existed for less than 20 years, unlike the centuries-old precious metals.
The crypto community quickly picked up the moves by gold and silver. CZ tried to reassure some BTC doubters, indicating that bitcoin is a “17-year-old technology, heavily suppressed in most of its existence.” He added that “we are still early.”
Santiment praised BTC’s resilience on Friday in times when silver and gold were plunging hard, and outlined the debate over whether precious metal investors will eventually rotate into crypto.
🤯 As debates have circulated as to whether precious metals would see their profits begin to move into cryptocurrencies, this certainly wasn’t on many peoples’ bingo cards:
🥇 The price of gold dropped more than -8% today
🥈 The price of silver dropped more than -25% todayThe… pic.twitter.com/c6eZJmonkz
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 30, 2026
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