The crypto sector remains deeply out of favor not only from a price perspective, but also in terms of investor sentiment.
Capital flows and market attention have increasingly shifted towards other high-growth sectors, most recently semiconductors and memory-related stocks, which have effectively replaced crypto as the market’s dominant momentum trade.
This analysis compares the performance cycles of bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization; gold, the largest precious metal; NVIDIA (NVDA), the leading AI-powered stock; and memory and semiconductor names including SanDisk ( SNDK ) and Micron Technology ( MU ).
Bitcoin saw a huge rally from its November 2022 low to its October 2025 peak, rising more than 650% from around $15,000 to nearly $125,000. A significant portion of this move took place between September 2024 and January 2025, with the price doubling from approximately $55,000 to $110,000 alongside Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024. The price ultimately peaked at around $126,000 last October.
Gold followed a delayed but similar trajectory, largely driven by the growing “debasement trade” narrative around fiscal deficits and monetary expansion. The metal began its breakout in early 2024 near $2,000 per ounce and eventually climbed above $5,200 per ounce in February 2026, about four months after bitcoin peaked. Since then, gold has corrected nearly 20% and is now trading below $4,400 per ounce. ounces.
NVIDIA followed a similar pattern, peaking near $225 per share in May before falling back to $212, and is now only slightly higher over the past six months.
Hot money trading has now shifted decisively toward memory and semiconductor companies such as Sandisk and Micron Technology, with Micron recently entering the $1 trillion market capitalization club after having a valuation of just $70 billion just a year ago.
With SpaceX potentially approaching the largest IPO in history, and OpenAI and Anthropic possibly soon to follow, investor attention may shift again. Much like crypto, gold and AI infrastructure before them, these companies could become the next big destination for speculative and momentum-driven capital, potentially defining the next phase of the market cycle.
With investors getting a shiny new object to give attention and money to, bitcoin and crypto may be sidelined from bull runs for far longer than expected.
