There has been a lot of attention on Bitcoin over the past decade. Do you think this has taken attention away from gold and silver? How has the Bitcoin market affected gold and silvers place in the world?
Not at all. Bitcoin is a gift to the gold story. It widens the audience for it. Its the same story. They have the same enemies and the same friends. Its just a shame you have some of the hard core gold bugs that refuse to attribute value to anything that is not tangible, as though the internet itself never produced an intangible asset. But humans are humans. On the crypto side you have the maximalists who believe crypto will destroy everything traditional. They remind me of the internet maximalists back in the nineties who thought of mining as part of an old economy that need not exist now that we had the internet. So they put off a lot of gold bugs because they are not that smart to begin with. A lot of them are hung up on the idea that bitcoin is not tangible, or that anyone can create a cryptocurrency since its just code (so they even call it fiat), or that it doesnt satisfy Ludwig von Misess regression theorem, or that gold is better money, and so on.
Indeed. BTC has actually put more Gold more often towards the front end of the news, Since because of the comparison that is continuously being made against BTC. This put a faction of those whom are more favored towards Gold, and some whom are more favored towards BTC or cryptocurrency in general.
There's also a probable reason for bullish prediction in Gold and Silver. BTC has had some FOMO of it reaching new ATH for the reason of halvings, and most possibly, a failure to reach this would cause a massive rejection towards crypto, which could probably move traders towards the gold market. Just a possibility though.