Why investors should ignore crypto and stick with gold

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Monday warned investors to stay away from crypto despite bitcoin‘s recent gains and instead look to gold.

“The charts, as interpreted by Carley Garner, suggest you need to ignore the crypto cheerleaders now that bitcoin’s bouncing. And if you seriously want a real hedge against inflation or economic chaos, she says you should stick with gold. And I agree,” he said.

Bitcoin continued to gain on Monday, reaching as high as $23,155.93 as investors bet that the Federal Reserve will ease its pace of interest rate cuts or stop them altogether. 

The price of the digital currency climbed reached $23,333.83 on Saturday for the first time since August, according to Coin Metrics. That marks an almost 39% climb in bitcoin since the beginning of this month.

To explain the analysis from Garner, who is the senior commodity market strategist and broker at DeCarley Trading, Cramer examined the daily chart of Bitcoin futures and the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100 going back to March 2021.

Garner pointed out that the two indexes are almost trading in lockstep, which suggests that it’s a risk asset rather than a currency or stable store hold of value, according to Cramer.

“Imagine business owners trying to conduct transactions with shares of Facebook or Google … it’s ridiculous, they’re too volatile. Bitcoin is no different,” he said.

The reason they trade so closely is because of “counterparty risk,” which is the probability that the other party in an investment or transaction might not fulfill their end of the deal, Cramer said.

“Of course, you can just own Bitcoin directly in a decentralized wallet — that protects you from counterparty risk — but if you ever want to use it for anything, the risk is back on the table. And as FTX’s customers learned, it can be devastating,” he said. “On the other hand, gold, well, it’s the opposite.”

Disclaimer: Cramer’s Charitable Trust owns shares of Meta Platforms and Alphabet.

For more analysis, watch Cramer’s full explanation below.