During an interview with CNBC on January 26, Jan Van Eck — who is the CEO of Van Eck Associates — indicated that many holders of Bitcoin have been switching to gold. Van Eck said that in the past year many investors moved from gold to Bitcoin, but this year he is witnessing the opposite trend. He went on to say that his company queried 4,000 investors who had been holding Bitcoin, and they found that these people's top investment this year is gold. In the same interview with CNBC, Tim Seymour — who is the chief investment officer and the founder of a company called Seymour Asset Management — discussed Bitcoin ETFs. He said in regard to them that he questions Bitcoin's ability to act as a store of value. He talked about how Bitcoin has not only lost liquidity but how the currency has little inherent value apart from its underlying blockchain technology. At the same time, he said, gold can clearly act as a store of value. Previously, Van Eck Associates created two of the most popular gold ETFs: the GDX gold miners and junior gold miners ETFs. Van Eck said that both ETFs have done well over the past few months. He also added that these funds generally perform the opposite of equity markets. He noted that when the S&P 500 was performing poorly last quarter the ETFs were doing well. He says that this makes the funds a good choice for those who want to diversify their portfolios. The gold ETFs rose about 14% last quarter, which were their best quarter since the second quarter of 2016. Conversely, the funds are only up 1% this year while the S&P 500 has risen 6% during the same time. In other Bitcoin ETF news, the BZX Equity Exchange (run by the Chicago Board Options Exchange) is no longer asking the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to change a rule that would allow Van Eck Associates to list a Bitcoin ETF along with a company called SolidX. In other Bitcoin news, it is being reported that the currency's average daily price change last year was the lowest in nearly a decade.