Can Bitcoin's Long-Term Catalysts Overcome Recent Headwinds? (BTC-USD)

By Ivan Castano

What a difference a few months can make.

Following the Iran conflict's breakout in late February, Bitcoin (BTC-USD) rose 5% to nearly $70,000, while the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF (IGV) tracking software stocks declined 2% – prompting Bitcoin fans to claim the world's top cryptocurrency had finally decoupled from high-growth tech stocks.

The correlation between BTC and the IGV (which includes Oracle (ORCL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Palantir (PLTR) as top holdings) had declined to 0.13 compared to 1.0 in early February as it traded “more like a macro asset, benefiting from geopolitical uncertainty,” CoinDesk reported in April. By late June, however, the trend had proved short-lived. Bitcoin had declined to around $60,000, pacing losses across big tech, amid worries about higher inflation and fresh AI bubble fears.

"People were just talking up bitcoin, worried about possible liquidations" after the coin entered a bear market in November 2025, said Joseph Schuster, founder of market researcher IPOX Schuster.

Despite these price movements, the CME CF Bitcoin Volatility Index, which measures the market's expectation of 30-day volatility in bitcoin, reached its 2026 low in early August.