Bitcoin vs Gold in Singapore: Is Bitcoin Really Digital Gold? [2026]

Between 31 December 2025 and 30 June 2026, the bitcoin reference price used by BlackRock's spot bitcoin trust fell 32.43%, from US$87,463.03 to US$59,101.49. Over the same six months, the LBMA gold price used by SPDR Gold Shares went from US$4,307.95 to US$4,026.05 an ounce, a fall of about 6.5%. Both are pitched as protection for savings, and both lost money, but by very different amounts.

A store of value is an asset you expect to hold its purchasing power over long periods, so that money parked today can still buy roughly as much in ten or twenty years. Gold has the longest record of any candidate. Above-ground gold stocks totalled 222,600 tonnes at the end of Q2 2026, and central banks held about 39,000 tonnes of it. Bitcoin's case rests on a different kind of scarcity, a supply schedule written into its software.

For investors in Singapore, the "digital gold" debate is also a practical one. Both assets can be held directly or through exchange-traded products listed in the US, and each route carries its own costs, custody arrangements and tax questions. Neither pays income, so everything depends on the price someone else will pay later.

You can hold gold as physical bullion, through a bank gold account or through a physically backed gold ETF such as GLD, IAU or GLDM. Bitcoin can be bought on a licensed exchange and held in your own wallet, or bought through a spot bitcoin exchange-traded product such as IBIT.

This guide explains what makes an asset a store of value, how gold and bitcoin supply differs, how each behaved through the first half of 2026, whether bitcoin passes the digital gold test, the main ways to hold each from Singapore, the fees and tax questions involved, and how much of a portfolio each can sensibly take.

Bitcoin vs gold at a glance

The two assets share a reputation for scarcity and little else.

Gold and bitcoin compared on supply, income, first-half 2026 price change and example ETFs

Source: World Gold Council, SPDR Gold Trust 10-Q, iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q, WisdomTree (as of 25 October 2026). The gold start price is the LBMA AM price, as no PM price was set on 31 December 2025.

What makes an asset a store of value?

A store of value has to do one job: keep purchasing power over time. Short-term price stability is a separate quality. An asset can swing a lot from month to month and still preserve wealth over decades, and a stable asset can lose value slowly to inflation.

Five tests help separate the two ideas:

• Long-term purchasing power: does the asset keep up with prices over periods of ten years or more?
• Low risk of permanent loss: can a holding fall to zero, or close to it?
• Liquidity under stress: can you sell at a fair price during a crisis, when you might actually need the money?
• Portability and divisibility: can you move it, split it and prove ownership easily?
• Counterparty dependence: does its value rely on a bank, exchange, custodian or government keeping its promises?

Gold scores well on permanent loss and counterparty risk when you hold the metal itself, and poorly on portability. Bitcoin is easy to move across borders and to divide into tiny amounts, but its record on the first three tests is short. Cryptocurrency prices can fluctuate greatly in a short time and can become zero overnight.

Supply: 222,600 tonnes versus 21 million coins

Gold's scarcity is physical. Most of the gold ever mined still exists, held as jewellery (about 99,700 tonnes), bars and coins (about 47,800 tonnes) and central bank reserves (about 39,000 tonnes), with a further 61,000 tonnes of below-ground reserves that can be economically extracted. New mine supply adds to the stock each year, but slowly relative to what already exists.

Bitcoin's scarcity is set in code. The block subsidy paid to miners halves every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every four years, and the halving in April 2024 cut it from 6.25 to 3.125 bitcoin. On that schedule, the full supply of 21 million coins will be mined around 2140.

The two kinds of scarcity behave differently. Gold supply responds a little to price, since higher prices make marginal mines worth operating and draw recycled jewellery onto the market. Bitcoin issuance ignores price entirely. That fixed schedule is the core of the digital gold argument, though a fixed supply only supports value if demand holds up, and demand for bitcoin has proven far more changeable than demand for gold.

How bitcoin and gold behaved in the first half of 2026

The first half of 2026 makes a clean test: both assets fell over the same window, and the US-listed trusts that hold them disclose the reference prices they use.

Source: SPDR Gold Trust 10-Q, iShares Bitcoin Trust 10-Q (as of 25 October 2026). Gold uses LBMA prices; bitcoin uses the CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate New York Variant, and the bitcoin peak-to-trough uses IBIT's NAV per share.

Gold had a rough half too: a fall of about 26% from its January high would count as a large drawdown for a share index. Bitcoin still fell roughly five times as much over the period, and IBIT's holdings were worth about 29% less than their cost at 30 June 2026: US$43.40 billion of bitcoin bought for US$61.00 billion.

First-half 2026 price change and peak-to-trough fall for gold and bitcoin

Gold has since steadied. GLDM's benchmark, the LBMA Gold Price PM, was US$4,048.25 on 23 October 2026, about 0.6% above its 30 June level.

Why lifetime return comparisons mislead

Charts that compare bitcoin's return since 2010 with gold's are common, and they say little about what either will do next. Bitcoin's early years started from a price near zero, so any long window that includes them produces huge percentage gains that no new buyer can repeat. Start dates matter for gold too: measuring from a peak or a trough can turn the same asset into a winner or a loser.

A fair comparison uses matched dates, the same currency and the same return convention. For a Singapore investor, that currency is the Singapore dollar. Both assets are priced in US dollars, so a stronger SGD over your holding period reduces returns in SGD terms, and a weaker one adds to them.

Inflation, interest rates and crises

Neither asset is a reliable month-to-month inflation hedge. Gold has kept purchasing power over very long periods, but it can go years without keeping pace with prices. Its price tends to respond to real interest rates, the US dollar and central bank demand, since holding gold means giving up the interest a bond or deposit would pay.

Bitcoin has a much shorter history and has often traded like a risk asset, rising when liquidity is plentiful and falling with growth shares when investors cut risk, as it did in the first half of 2026.

Crisis behaviour separates them most. In a liquidity squeeze, investors sell what they can, and assets with large paper gains are often sold first. Gold has a long record of central bank buying and deep, established markets in London and New York. Bitcoin trades around the clock on many exchanges, which helps access but also means sharp moves can happen at weekends while traditional markets are shut.

Does bitcoin pass the digital gold test?

On the five store-of-value tests, bitcoin's results are mixed. It wins clearly on portability and divisibility, and its supply schedule is more predictable than gold's. It loses on volatility, on the risk of permanent loss and on its short record through crises.

Source: MoneySense, World Gold Council (as of 25 October 2026)

For now, bitcoin is better described as a young, scarce and very volatile asset that may still become a store of value. An investor who needs savings to hold their value through the next downturn has far more evidence behind gold.

Ways to hold gold and bitcoin from Singapore

The route you choose changes your costs, your counterparty and your tax position.

Physical gold, gold accounts and gold ETFs

Physical bullion removes counterparty risk if you store it yourself, but you pay dealer spreads on the way in and out, plus storage or insurance. Bank gold accounts are simpler to buy and sell, though what you hold is a claim on the bank instead of specific bars.

A physically backed gold ETF holds allocated gold bars with a custodian and issues shares that track the gold price, less fees. The three largest US-listed options are trusts with similar structures and different fees.

Source: State Street GLD, State Street GLDM, iShares IAU, iShares Gold Trust 10-Q (as of 25 October 2026)

GLD, launched in November 2004, is the largest and the usual choice for traders who want the deepest market. GLDM, launched in June 2018, holds the same kind of gold at a quarter of GLD's fee. Its gold is 100% allocated good delivery bars, and the fund sells small amounts of gold to pay its fee, so the gold behind each share declines slowly over time. For a long-term holder, the fee gap matters more than the size gap: 0.30 percentage points a year on US$10,000 is US$30 a year.

These trusts hold the metal itself. A gold miners ETF instead owns companies whose profits move with the gold price, plus their own operating, debt and country risks.

Bitcoin directly or through a spot bitcoin ETP

Buying bitcoin directly means using a crypto exchange and either leaving the coins with the exchange or moving them to a wallet you control. Self-custody removes exchange risk but makes security entirely your job: if you lose your private key, you lose access to your tokens, and service providers are not required to protect your cryptocurrency.

A spot bitcoin exchange-traded product holds bitcoin with a custodian and trades like a share on a stock exchange. The US SEC declared the iShares Bitcoin Trust's registration effective on 10 January 2024, and its shares listed on Nasdaq the next day. That approval covered the product's listing on an exchange, and investors still carry the full risk of the bitcoin inside it.

IBIT charges a 0.25% sponsor fee, keeps its bitcoin with Coinbase Custody Trust Company, and held 734,261 bitcoin at 30 June 2026. Fidelity's FBTC and ARK's ARKB are spot bitcoin products from other sponsors. IBIT, GLD, IAU and GLDM all sit outside the US Investment Company Act of 1940, so they lack the protections that come with a registered fund. Only authorised participants can buy or redeem IBIT shares directly with the trust; individual investors trade them on the exchange.

Buying either from Singapore

US-listed ETFs and trusts are bought through a broker with US market access, after you complete the broker's account opening and US tax form. Some exchange-traded products are classed as Specified Investment Products, and before you can trade listed SIPs your broker must carry out a Customer Account Review. Each broker decides how it classifies individual products, so check before you place an order.

Fees, tax and estate questions for Singapore investors

The cost of holding either asset through an ETP starts with the annual fee: 0.10% to 0.40% for the three gold trusts and 0.25% for IBIT. On top of that sit brokerage, the SGD-to-USD conversion spread and the bid-ask spread on each trade.

Singapore generally does not tax individuals on gains from the sale of shares and financial instruments held as investments, though IRAS can treat frequent, trading-style activity as taxable income. Gold and bitcoin trusts pay no dividends, so the 30% US withholding on US-source dividends for nonresident aliens does not come into play the way it does for share ETFs.

US estate tax is the larger question. The estate of a nonresident non-citizen must file Form 706-NA when US-situs assets exceed US$60,000. GLD, IAU, GLDM and IBIT are all US trusts, and how a court or the IRS would treat units in each depends on its legal form. Investors with large holdings in US-listed trusts should get estate-planning advice.

Physical gold stored in Singapore and bitcoin held in self-custody raise different questions, mainly around access and inheritance: without the private key, heirs cannot reach the coins at all. This is general information, not tax advice.

How much belongs in a diversified portfolio?

Gold and bitcoin are satellite holdings for most investors. The useful question is how much loss you could absorb if either fell sharply, and simple arithmetic answers it.

Take a S$100,000 portfolio and assume that everything outside the satellite holding stays flat. A 5% position (S$5,000) through the first half of 2026 would have fallen to about S$4,673 in gold or S$3,379 in bitcoin, costing the whole portfolio 0.33% or 1.62%.

Six months is a short window, so it helps to test harder cases.

Example only. Assumes a S$100,000 portfolio, the rest of the portfolio unchanged, and no currency moves.

At small weights the portfolio-level losses look manageable. The holding itself is a different matter: after an 80% fall, bitcoin has to rise 400% to get back to where it started, and after a 60% fall it needs 150%. Rebalancing back to target after a fall means buying more of the asset that just dropped, so decide in advance whether you would do that.

Portfolio loss on a S$100,000 portfolio from 1%, 3% and 5% bitcoin positions falling 40%, 60% or 80%

Gold and bitcoin can also sit together. Gold has a longer record as a diversifier, and bitcoin adds higher potential upside with much higher risk. If you hold bitcoin, size it so that a total loss would hurt but leave your plans intact.

Invest in gold and bitcoin with StashAway

Gold is the easier of the two to hold in an everyday portfolio. ETF Explorer lets you buy SPDR Gold MiniShares (GLDM), a physically backed gold ETF, from its Gold page for US$1 per buy or sell order (excluding GST), with no management fee on top. You can pay with cash or SRS and hold it next to your equity and bond ETFs.

Bitcoin is open to Accredited Investors through StashAway's Bitcoin ETF Portfolio, which invests in a Fidelity spot bitcoin ETF. It charges a 0.3% a year management fee plus the ETF's 0.25% expense ratio, with no trading or withdrawal fees.

Gold and bitcoin prices can swing sharply, so you could get back less than you put in.

Frequently asked questions

Short answers to the questions investors in Singapore ask most about bitcoin and gold.

Is bitcoin really digital gold?

Partly. Bitcoin shares gold's scarcity and adds easy transfer, but its record as a store of value is far shorter, and in the first half of 2026 it fell 32.43% while gold fell about 6.5%.

Is gold less volatile than bitcoin?

Yes, by a wide margin, though gold still has big swings. Within the first half of 2026, gold fell 26.0% from its January high to its June low, against a 39.5% fall in IBIT's NAV per share over a similar stretch. Over the full six months, bitcoin's loss was roughly five times gold's.

Can I buy GLD, GLDM or IBIT from Singapore?

You can, through a broker with access to US exchanges, once your account and US tax form are set up. Your broker may classify some exchange-traded products as Specified Investment Products, which requires a Customer Account Review before you trade. GLDM is also available through StashAway's ETF Explorer.

Is there US estate tax on gold and bitcoin ETFs?

Possibly. All four trusts discussed here are US trusts, and the estate of a nonresident non-citizen must file Form 706-NA once US-situs assets pass US$60,000. How each trust's units are treated depends on its legal form, so get professional advice if your holdings are large.

Does gold pay dividends?

No. Gold, bitcoin and gold ETFs pay no income. Gold ETFs also sell a little gold over time to cover their fees, so the gold behind each share slowly shrinks. Your return comes entirely from changes in the price.

How much bitcoin should I hold?

There is no standard figure. A useful test is to size the position so that an 80% fall, which would cost a 5% holding 4% of your portfolio, would not change your plans. Many investors keep any bitcoin to a small satellite position next to a diversified core.