Bitcoin is trading more like gold than at any point in six years. The 90-day correlation between the two assets climbed above 0.5 at the end of August, a level last seen during the 2020 stimulus wave, according to data from asset manager Bitwise.
The shift followed a rough stretch for US bonds. Long-dated Treasury yields moved higher and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent doubled the department’s liquidity-support buybacks of 10- to 30-year bonds to $4 billion per operation starting Sept. 9. Bitcoin gained 22.4% in the week that followed, its best weekly run since March 2024. Gold added about 5% while stocks fell.
Bitwise’s Europe research head Andre Dragosch wrote in a client memo that investors are no longer choosing between the two hedges. “Investors are no longer asking whether to hedge currency debasement with gold or bitcoin,” he wrote. “They’re simply hedging with both.”
The macro backdrop is fiscal. US national debt crossed $40 trillion on Aug. 18, more than double its 2017 level, and stood at $40.13 trillion a day before the buyback announcement. Bitcoin traded near $84,400 on Saturday, roughly a third below its October record of about $126,000. The asset has recovered from a mid-year slide but sits short of its highs, and the correlation data is one of the clearer signals that its investor base is changing underneath the price action.
What the data shows
| Metric | Reading | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 90-day BTC-gold correlation | Above 0.5, highest since 2020 | Bitwise |
| 30-day BTC-S&P 500 correlation | Near zero | Glassnode |
| BTC-dollar index correlation, 90-day | Negative | Bitwise |
| BTC weekly gain after buyback news | +22.4% | Bitwise |
| US national debt | $40.13 trillion | Treasury data via Bitwise |
| Gold share of global reserves, end-2025 | 27% | ECB |
Bitcoin’s correlation with the S&P 500 fell toward zero during the August rally, analysts at Glassnode noted, while its relationship with the dollar index turned negative. Bloomberg senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas said bitcoin has held a lower correlation to US stocks than gold over the past six months. “Bitcoin has always been about .40, it’s gold and Treasurys that have become much more correlated,” he posted. “Small window of time to be sure, but still notable and blows up the claim that it’s just QQQ.”
The last two times the correlation hit these levels, government was intervening heavily in markets. In 2020, pandemic-era fiscal and monetary stimulus pushed the reading to a similar peak. Bitcoin gained 172% in the months after the late-2020 spike, and rallied close to 350% in the 14 months after a similar move in late 2022, figures reported by The Block show. Those precedents explain why the correlation is being read as bullish rather than as a curiosity.
Skeptics see a temporary regime
Not everyone accepts the digital-gold framing. Glassnode analysts wrote that sudden decorrelations from equities have historically been short-lived, marking local exhaustion rather than structural change. A correlation of 0.5 also sits at the edge of the range Bitwise itself classes as low. Readings between -0.5 and 0.5 are traditionally described as having no meaningful relationship, so the asset has only just crossed into territory where the co-movement counts.
There are structural differences too. Gold made up 27% of global official reserves at end-2025 valuations, according to European Central Bank data, though the ECB said the figure largely reflects valuation effects from a 60% gold price rise in 2025 rather than fresh central-bank buying. Measured at end-2023 prices, gold’s share falls to 16% while Treasuries rise to 26%. Even so, the World Gold Council’s 2026 survey found 89% of participating central banks expected global gold holdings to increase over the following year, and a record 45% planned to raise their own reserves. Bitcoin has no equivalent buyer base. Its recent support has come from US spot ETFs, which took in an average of $290 million a day at the height of the August rally, with daily trading volume near $3 billion.
Volatility remains the other gap. A defensive asset should preserve value during a rush for cash, and bitcoin has historically fallen sharply in exactly those moments. Its volatility stays far above gold’s. Blocknow analysts noted that the current reading supports the debasement-hedge case but falls short of proving bitcoin has become a safe haven.
Bitwise chief investment officer Matt Hougan framed the choice investors face differently. If the US grows its way out of a $40 trillion debt load, he argued, AI stocks win. If it inflates its way out, bitcoin wins. “If you want to win in either scenario, own both,” he wrote.
CoinDesk reported that Standard Chartered kept its $500,000 bitcoin target for 2030, and analyst Geoff Kendrick called the Treasury buyback action “exactly the type of thing Bitcoin loves.” HashKey Group researcher Tim Sun linked the August breakout to easing yields, short covering and stronger ETF demand, noting the inflows followed the initial breakout rather than starting it.
On-chain data adds a second layer. Glassnode identified a cluster of long-term holder supply between $83,000 and $86,000, with its main accumulation floor between $62,000 and $65,000. At around $78,000 in late August, 68% of bitcoin supply was in profit, compared with 65% at a similar price in May. Exchange balances have moved lower, with more than 13,800 BTC leaving Binance on a net basis in a single day, the largest daily outflow from the exchange since 2023, according to data cited by market analysts.
For now the market is watching whether the pairing survives beyond the current 90-day window. Real yields, ETF flows and bitcoin’s behavior in the next equity drawdown will offer a cleaner test than one rally. Dragosch, for his part, is betting the shift lasts. “Bitcoin spent its first fifteen years being priced as a risk asset,” he wrote. “If this correlation trend with gold holds, the next fifteen may look very different.”