Will History Repeat Itself? Bitcoin Returns to the Digital Gold Era

Correlation with gold hits its highest since 2020, but what’s different about this time around?

Author: Tanay Ved

Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News

Introduction

For years, the core investment thesis for Bitcoin has centered on its role as a scarce, non-sovereign monetary asset, often benchmarked against gold. Yet during certain market phases, its price action has tracked high-beta assets, moving in tandem with tech stocks and heavily influenced by market liquidity, interest rates, and risk appetite. As macro conditions and the composition of Bitcoin investors evolve across different market cycles, these cross-asset correlations have continuously shifted.

In this article, we examine how Bitcoin’s correlations with gold, equities, and the US dollar rotate across market cycles; why the current high correlation between Bitcoin and gold warrants close attention; and how shifts in real yields and recent macroeconomic data releases have shaped Bitcoin’s near-term trajectory.

Historical Correlation Cycles for Bitcoin

As discussed in our previous piece, Is Bitcoin Decoupling from Traditional Markets?, Bitcoin’s linkage to traditional assets shifts alongside market regimes. During different periods, Bitcoin has either co-moved with growth and technology stocks or behaved as a scarce store of value. What distinguishes the current environment is that the 90-day correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and gold has climbed to +0.56, its highest level since 2020, while its correlation with the Nasdaq 100 and the US dollar has pulled back to near zero.