Welcome to the US Crypto News Morning Briefing—your essential rundown of the most important developments in crypto for the day ahead.
Grab a coffee. The year is still young, but the gold market is already sending a message that long-term assumptions may be getting rewritten faster than expected.
Crypto News of the Day: Goldman Sachs Raises 2026 Gold Price Target from $4,900 to $5,400
Gold has barely made it through the first month of 2026, yet Goldman Sachs is already growing more confident that the rally has further to run.
With spot gold trading around $4,827 at the time of writing, just below its all-time high of $4,888 set on January 21, the Wall Street giant has raised its year-end 2026 gold price forecast to $5,400 per ounce.
Indeed, the revision comes just weeks into the new year. It also comes barely a month after market analysts and crypto commentators alike widely cited Goldman’s prior projection.
Notably, before this revision, Goldman Sachs had forecast the gold price to reach $4,900 in 2026. This means a 10% raise only weeks after the investment banker’s previous position.
Since then, prices have surged far faster than anticipated. It has forced institutions to reassess both the pace and durability of gold’s ascent, as reported in the previous US Crypto News publication.
According to Goldman Sachs, the catalyst for the revised forecast is intensifying competition for a finite pool of physical bullion.
The bank’s analysts say the shift marks a meaningful evolution from the 2023–2024 period, when official-sector buying alone underpinned much of gold’s upside.
The bank now expects central banks to purchase an average of 60 metric tons of gold per month in 2026. This, they say, would be driven by emerging markets diversifying their reserves away from traditional fiat exposure.