Gold prices have shattered records this week, briefly topping $4,000 an ounce for the first time ever.
This caps off a near-50% surge in 2025 which has turned the oldest “safe haven” in finance into one of the world’s hottest and apparently most crowded trades.
The surge is a markedly extreme move for an asset that typically posts single-digit annual gains. The last time gold climbed this fast was more than four decades ago , during the inflationary late 1970s, when prices rose over 200% in a single year.
Since then, even crises like 2008 or 2020 have rarely produced even roughly comparable momentum. Gold returns in 2024 were historically elevated at around 25%, but 2025’s rise is more dramatic still.
In all, the near-50% surge makes 2025 appear less as a bull market and more like a clear return to the fevered psychology of gold’s most dramatic eras—with fear, not greed, driving demand.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Citadel founder Ken Griffin called gold’s rise “really concerning,” warning that investors are now treating gold as safer than the dollar. Griffin’s unease highlights a deeper anxiety: that faith in U.S. institutions and in the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is eroding.
“We’re seeing substantial asset inflation away from the dollar,” Griffin said Monday , describing the U.S. economy as “on a bit of a sugar high.”
As Griffin’s comments underline, experts largely see gold’s climb as being driven by central banks’ buying—which may mark a move away from accumulation of USD. Related factors include a prolonged U.S. government shutdown , U.S. instability more generally (including worries about the independence of the Federal Reserve), and the popularity of gold ETFs, which themselves create demand for the precious metal. Together, these factors have encouraged global investors to dump dollars and load up on precious metals and Bitcoin—what’s known as the “ debasement trade .”
Before this week’s record-breaking milestone, banks including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs had forecast $4,000 gold by next year . It just arrived early.