Quick Take
- Bitcoin’s correlation with gold reached its highest level since 2020 at the end of August, Bitwise data shows.
- Glassnode is less convinced by bitcoin’s recent divergence from U.S. equities, saying similar moves during bond selloffs have previously been short-lived.
Bitcoin and gold moved more closely together during the latest bond market selloff, with their 90-day correlation reaching a nearly six-year high, according to data from Bitwise.
The correlation rose after yields on longer-dated U.S. Treasurys moved higher and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent increased purchases of long-dated bonds. Bitcoin rose 22.4% over the following week — its biggest weekly gain since March 2024 — while gold added about 5% and stocks fell, André Dragosch, director of research for Bitwise in Europe, noted in a client memo on Wednesday.
The last comparable reading was in 2020, Dragosch said, around the time governments and central banks responded to the Covid crisis with fiscal and monetary stimulus. Bitcoin was also negatively correlated with the U.S. Dollar Index at the end of August, based on Bitwise's 90-day measure, implying that headwinds for the dollar are tailwinds for bitcoin and gold, according to the firm.
"When things get serious and macro forces are strong, investors are discriminating less and less between bitcoin and gold as they navigate rising currency debasement risks," Dragosch said. "In those scenarios, bitcoin has recently started to look like an amplified version of gold."
What happened to the stock correlation?
Bitcoin's 30-day correlation with the S&P 500 fell toward zero during the August rally, analysts at Glassnode noted in a Tuesday report. U.S. stocks were largely flat at the time. However, sudden decorrelations during sovereign bond selloffs have tended to be "short-lived" historically, the analysts said, marking local exhaustion rather than structural regime shifts.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas noted that bitcoin has had a lower correlation to U.S. stocks than gold, small caps, emerging markets, and even Treasurys over the past six months. "Bitcoin has always been about .40, it's gold and Treasurys that have become much more correlated," he said. "Small window of time to be sure, but still notable and blows up the claim that it's just QQQ."
In terms of price action, bitcoin cleared $80,000 toward the end of August after a 25% monthly rally, before falling back toward $76,000. Glassnode identified a cluster of long-term holder supply between $83,000 and $86,000, while its main accumulation floor sits between $62,000 and $65,000, with bitcoin currently trading between them at around $77,600.
At around $78,000 in late August, 68% of bitcoin supply was in profit, compared with 65% when the price was at a similar level in May, according to Glassnode. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds were taking in an average of $290 million a day at the height of the rally, while daily ETF trading volume remained near $3 billion.
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
© 2026 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.
Facts Only
* Bitcoin’s correlation with gold reached its highest level since 2020 at the end of August.
* The 90-day correlation between Bitcoin and gold reached a nearly six-year high during a recent bond market selloff, according to Bitwise data.
* This rise occurred after yields on longer-dated U.S. Treasurys increased and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent increased long-dated bond purchases.
* Bitcoin rose 22.4% over the week following these events.
* Gold added about 5% during the same period.
* Bitcoin was negatively correlated with the U.S. Dollar Index at the end of August based on a 90-day measure.
* A 30-day correlation between Bitcoin and the S\&P 500 fell toward zero during the August rally.
* 68% of Bitcoin supply was in profit around $78,000 in late August, compared to 65% in May.
* Spot Bitcoin ETFs saw average daily inflows of $290 million at the height of the rally.
Executive Summary
Full Take
The narrative suggests a convergence between risk assets (Bitcoin and gold) when macro forces are strong, potentially driven by concerns over currency debasement risks and sovereign debt dynamics. The observation that recent decorrelations with U.S. equities have been short-lived implies that current divergences may be transient noise rather than fundamental structural breaks in asset relationships. The shift in correlation where Bitcoin appears more closely aligned with gold than with traditional equity benchmarks or even some Treasurys suggests a potential decoupling of the risk premium into commodity/digital asset space, potentially driven by monetary policy shifts rather than purely market sentiment. The skepticism from analysts regarding the longevity of this divergence implies that while short-term correlations can be manipulated or temporary, deeper structural regimes may still be at play. The focus on long-term holder supply dynamics indicates that current price action is also being filtered through institutional accumulation thresholds, suggesting that narrative shifts must be weighed against underlying capital flows and positioning.
When assessing the assertion that Bitcoin looks like an amplified version of gold in serious macro scenarios, one must ask what specific aspects of currency debasement or fiscal response are driving this observed alignment, and whether this correlation is stable across different cycles of monetary policy. What mechanism prevents the historical pattern of short-lived decorrelations from being invalidated by a potentially prolonged structural shift indicated by the increased BTC-gold correlation? Furthermore, if Bitcoin's lower correlation with equities and Treasurys is persistent, what does this imply about the role of traditional risk assets versus digital assets in managing systemic risk during periods of high interest rate volatility?
Sentinel — Human
This text functions as a grounded piece of financial analysis, synthesizing reported data and expert commentary on Bitcoin's correlation dynamics with traditional assets, exhibiting characteristics of human financial reporting.