Bitcoin’s relationship with traditional markets has shifted sharply in recent weeks, according to data from Santiment. BTC’s correlations with U.S. equities, the dollar, and gold have all weakened, with the cryptocurrency trading far more independently after rebounding from a dip to $75,000 following the failed CLARITY Act vote and then surging above $87,000.
The scale of divergence is striking. Since August 18, Bitcoin’s market cap has grown by 36.0%, while the S&P 500 gained only 0.8% and gold fell 1.5%. This reverses a narrative from early September, when Bitcoin’s 90-day correlation with gold climbed above 0.50 for the first time in about six years, while its correlation with the Nasdaq 100 dropped toward 0.30–0.33. At that time, investors appeared to treat BTC less like a high-beta tech asset and more like a scarce monetary hedge.
Santiment linked the breakout to selling among smaller 0.1–10 BTC wallets in mid-August, renewed exchange-traded fund demand, larger U.S. Treasury buybacks, and short squeezes during successive resistance breaks. The Treasury raised the maximum size of certain long-dated bond buyback operations from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, effective September 9, as a liquidity-support measure. Bitcoin also absorbed last week’s Federal Reserve rate hike and the CLARITY Act setback before climbing above $87,000.
Santiment argued that crypto-specific forces were driving the move as stocks faced higher rates and uneven market participation, while expectations of tighter policy weighed on gold. Still, the data does not prove a permanent decoupling. Bitcoin’s historical correlations have repeatedly shifted with liquidity, monetary policy, and investor positioning. For now, however, BTC is behaving neither like digital gold, a leveraged tech stock, nor a simple anti-dollar trade.
