Safe Havens, Gold, and Custody Risk in Bitcoin

Summary

The February 23, 2026 episode of the Robin Seyr Podcast features Michael Tanguma assessing whether Bitcoin’s sharp drawdown reflects broken fundamentals or a temporary dislocation. Tanguma contrasts collapsing retail leverage and digital asset treasury trades with expanding institutional infrastructure, sovereign hedging, and a renewed gold rally that signals deep unease with the dollar system. He argues that quantum-computing fears, narrative attacks, and custody concentration mask the real question: how investors design safe, durable ways to hold Bitcoin as it evolves from risk asset to reserve money.

Take-Home Messages

1. Macro Uncertainty Is Elevated: Cross-asset volatility and inflation above bond yields leave investors without obvious safe havens, pushing them to reassess Bitcoin’s role.
2. Fundamentals Have Strengthened: Institutional plumbing, regulatory acts, and stablecoin rails are expanding even as Bitcoin’s price and sentiment lag.
3. Gold’s Rally Sends a Signal: Recent gold outperformance is framed as evidence that the dollar system is strained and that neutral reserve assets are back in focus.
4. Custody is the Core Risk: Concentration of Bitcoin in large custodians, ETFs, and fragile proxy structures creates single points of failure that contradict its promise of money without intermediaries.
5. Adoption Hinges on Practical Custody: Barbell strategies and multi-institution custody models may offer a realistic path for mainstream users who cannot safely self-custody large balances.

Overview

Michael Tanguma describes the current macro environment as the most disorienting period he has seen in a decade of working in Bitcoin and markets. He cites an uncertainty index rivaling past crises, AI-driven disruption of white-collar and SaaS firms, precious metals trading like speculative tokens, and bonds that yield less than real inflation. Against this backdrop, he argues that investors see no obvious safe haven while Bitcoin, marketed as a debasement hedge, can still look like a risk asset over short horizons.

Tanguma notes that gold benefits from 5,000 years of monetary credibility, whereas Bitcoin’s 17–18 year history and knowledge inertia keep many observers anchored to viewing it as a speculative bet. He argues that recent pain stems less from a broken thesis than from overleveraged positions—digital asset treasury trades, margin use, and short time horizons—that turned an ordinary drawdown into a sentiment collapse (see my Bitcoin Worlds paper on the dangers of leverage here). By his account, Bitcoin’s “fundamentals” have improved roughly tenfold through infrastructure, regulation, and education while price has been cut in half, creating what he sees as pronounced asymmetry for long-term buyers.

He emphasizes that retail capitulation and social-media pessimism contrast with “smart money” behavior, pointing to large buyers accumulating Bitcoin daily and institutions quietly building wallet infrastructure and services. Tanguma highlights U.S. policy moves, including stablecoin legislation and acts such as the Genius Act and pending Clarity Act, alongside rapid growth of dollar stablecoins as evidence that dollar and Bitcoin rails are being built in tandem. He links these developments to a historic surge in gold, rising sovereign gold reserves, and the idea that gold is reasserting itself as neutral money while Bitcoin emerges as “gold with wings” that offers similar properties with greater mobility.

On market structure, Tanguma argues that the traditional four-year halving cycle has been disrupted by the advent of spot ETFs, options, and around-the-clock global demand that change liquidity dynamics. He notes that sovereigns currently find it easier to accumulate large positions in gold because Bitcoin’s market depth remains limited, a situation he expects to change as liquidity and conviction grow among early adopters such as family offices and smaller states. He also contends that while quantum-computing fears and narrative attacks around controversial figures can temporarily push conservative allocators toward gold, the combination of bond impairment, counterparty risk, and improving Bitcoin infrastructure still supports a path to new all-time highs over a long-term horizon.

Implications and Future Outlook

Tanguma’s analysis implies that policymakers and allocators must treat Bitcoin as part of a broader shift in how the world thinks about safe assets. If gold strength and bond impairment signal a weakening dollar system, then regulatory clarity, ETF design, and disclosure standards will influence whether Bitcoin is viewed as a leveraged tech bet or as emerging reserve money. Decisions across securities, banking, and commodities regulators will shape how easily capital can move from negative-yielding instruments into assets that claim to reduce counterparty risk.

Looking ahead, custody and governance loom larger than price targets. The concentration of assets in a few custodians and complex proxy vehicles creates systemic vulnerabilities that could trigger cascading losses if any major provider fails. At the same time, how the community and institutions handle quantum narratives and potential upgrades will either reinforce Bitcoin’s credibility as neutral, rule-bound money or invite concerns that powerful actors can bend the protocol to their interests.

Some Key Information Gaps

1. How should investors evaluate Bitcoin’s role as a safe haven when traditional assets and macro indicators all signal elevated uncertainty? A clearer framework is needed so households, institutions, and sovereigns can distinguish between temporary volatility and genuine failure of the safe-haven thesis.
2. Which measurable factors most accurately reflect “10x fundamentals” in Bitcoin, such as institutional buildout and regulatory clarity? Identifying robust indicators would help analysts and policymakers judge whether market prices are leading or lagging structural change.
3. Under what conditions does gold absorb most of the flight-to-safety demand that might otherwise have gone into Bitcoin? Understanding this interaction is crucial for projecting Bitcoin’s monetization path and for anticipating cross-asset stress in crises.
4. What realistic timelines and scenarios for quantum computing advancement would create concrete risks for existing Bitcoin addresses? Credible scenario mapping is essential to avoid both complacency and overreaction in protocol governance and infrastructure planning.
5. Which custody models best balance usability, redundancy, and resistance to both hacking and physical coercion for ordinary households? Without practical, secure custody options, Bitcoin’s promise as widely held savings will remain constrained to technically sophisticated or highly resourced users.

Broader Implications for Bitcoin

Safe Havens in a Fractured Macro Regime

As inflation outpaces bond yields and volatility spreads across asset classes, demand for alternative safe havens is likely to intensify. Competition between gold, Bitcoin, and high-quality collateral will shape how states and institutions manage reserves and funding costs. Outcomes will influence everything from capital controls to how households diversify retirement savings.

Reserve Assets and Monetary Hierarchies

If gold’s renewed strength reflects a structural move away from dollar dominance, Bitcoin’s positioning as a mobile, bearer-form reserve asset takes on new importance. Jurisdictions that quietly accumulate both assets while building settlement and custody infrastructure may gain leverage in future monetary negotiations. This could produce a more plural reserve system in which Bitcoin serves as a complementary hedge against both debasement and counterparty risk.

Custody Standards as Systemic Infrastructure

The way markets resolve custody—across self-custody, ETF exposure, and multi-institution vaults—will function as systemic infrastructure on par with payment networks and clearinghouses. Poorly designed custody concentration could turn technical failures or targeted attacks into market-wide crises, especially if ETF and proxy structures dominate holdings. Conversely, robust standards that spread key control and clarify legal rights across forks can make Bitcoin-based savings safer than many legacy deposits.

Quantum Narratives and Protocol Governance

Quantum-computing narratives will increasingly test how resilient and transparent Bitcoin’s governance norms really are. If speculative fears become a pretext for rushed upgrades or de facto control by a few large custodians and corporate holders, confidence in Bitcoin’s neutrality could erode. Well-designed processes that require broad consensus, clear threat modeling, and conservative changes would instead reinforce its status as a rule-bound global monetary network.

Retail Exposure and Leverage Cycles

The boom and bust of digital asset treasury companies and Bitcoin-proxy stocks highlight how easily retail investors can be pulled into leverage they do not understand. Over the next cycles, regulators, platforms, and educators will face pressure to differentiate between genuine access products and speculative wrappers masquerading as “better Bitcoin.” How this line is drawn will strongly influence whether ordinary savers experience Bitcoin as a source of financial resilience or as another venue for catastrophic losses.

User Experience as a Gatekeeper for Adoption

Custody complexity and personal security concerns remain major bottlenecks for mainstream Bitcoin adoption. If the ecosystem succeeds in delivering “MacBook-level” products that hide cryptographic complexity while preserving user control, far more people will treat Bitcoin as long-term savings rather than a trading chip. Failure to solve this user-experience gap would leave large shares of the population dependent on opaque custodians, recreating many of the vulnerabilities Bitcoin was meant to escape.