Since the beginning of 2025, asset performance has shattered many people's expectations. Looking back, from Trump's inauguration on January 20 to now, the actual market trend and the general outlook at the start of the year are almost worlds apart.

Here's an interesting comparison: if you invested $10,000 in silver on the day Trump took office, your account would now be worth $41,300 — a 134% increase. Gold also performed strongly, rising by 60%. And what about the much-anticipated cryptocurrencies? From inauguration day to now, they have experienced negative returns overall, with market sentiment once hitting rock bottom, and a large amount of capital fleeing these highly volatile speculative assets.

On the surface, this seems quite counterintuitive. Over the past few months, the Trump administration has taken several actions — adjusting SEC regulatory approaches, announcing the establishment of a national Bitcoin reserve, and pushing for legislation like the GENIUS Act. These are all positive signals for the crypto space, so why hasn't the market responded as expected? Instead, traditional precious metals have completely outperformed.

Looking deeper, the reasons are actually not hard to understand. The global geopolitical situation remains tense — the Russia-Ukraine war is still costing money, Middle Eastern issues remain unresolved, and trade frictions are escalating. The Trump administration's policies of imposing tariffs on multiple countries have put real cost pressures on businesses and investors. In such an environment, people's defensive instincts are activated. Tangible assets, things you can hold in your hand, especially precious metals which are natural safe havens, naturally become the capital's refuge.

Silver's performance has been particularly fierce, and there's a logical reason for that. Silver is a byproduct of many precious metal mining operations, with limited production growth. Meanwhile, demand from emerging industries like chip manufacturing and green energy continues to rise — this is real industrial demand for silver, not just paper promises. Supply-side bottlenecks combined with expanding demand create a scenario where price surges are hardly surprising.

What about Bitcoin and other crypto assets? Essentially, they are still betting on the future — betting on new technological stories, regulatory improvements, and institutional adoption. But in this uncertain moment, the appeal of such long-term bets has clearly diminished. The market is more interested in assets that can hedge known risks, rather than taking on new uncertainties for potential gains.

From this perspective, the capital choices in the first half of 2025 actually reflect a deeper shift: during periods of significant uncertainty in the global order, assets with tangible value have outperformed narrative-driven assets. Silver's victory is fundamentally a "physical assets triumph over virtual" and "hedging over speculation" victory. This may not be a permanent trend, but at least under the current macro cycle and geopolitical landscape, it is the answer the market is giving.