This week, the Strait of Hormuz put the digital gold narrative under pressure again. The Strait is 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. A third of all seaborne crude passes through it. This is the moment BTC is supposed to thrive in, but instead gold took its place. Higher oil prices push up energy costs. Bitcoin mining is deeply energy intensive, so when those costs rise, miners tend to sell to cover rather than hold. Macro shocks tighten dollar liquidity too, and BTC has grown increasingly correlated with that cycle. Institutional participation through spot ETFs has only amplified the sensitivity. The digital gold thesis may not be wrong long term, but the problem is timing. Gold has decades of institutional precedent behind it. In a crisis, capital flows toward the asset class that institutions are already comfortable with. This is playing out now with the Supreme Court tariff rollback and the Iran situation pulling in opposite directions. The fear and greed index has sat in fear territory most of the month while BTC consolidates sideways. And when the dollar rallies off the back of a geopolitical shock, crypto tends to end up on the wrong side of both trades. That could change as the investor base deepens and correlation with high beta equities weakens. Bitcoin isn't there yet.(Delphi Digital)