Author: Cathy, Plain Blockchain

The best and worst days for U.S. stocks this year were only 24 hours apart, and BTC followed both times.

On November 4, the Dow Jones rose by 3%, and BTC rebounded to $81,000. On November 5, the Nasdaq closed down 5.5%, and BTC fell back to $75,200. What brought it down wasn't an on-chain crisis but an AI sell-off. Just two months ago, Grayscale said BTC was decoupling from tech stocks and moving towards gold, and then the correlation flipped back.

01 How an AI Sell-Off Hit BTC

The trigger has nothing to do with crypto.

Just the day before, it was the best day since April 2025, and BTSE's COO Jeff Mei stated that the market felt the Iran conflict was coming to an end. 24 hours later, the wind changed direction.

Reuters reported that after the Democrats took control of Congress, the market was worried about a slowdown in data center construction, and chip stocks began falling the day before, with the 5th being the second day. The Nasdaq Composite fell by 5.52%, the Dow Jones dropped 1833 points, and the semiconductor ETF fell over 12%, marking the worst performance since March 2020.

The chips were the worst off. Nvidia closed down 9.26%, and AMD dropped 17.26%. AMD's earnings report actually surpassed expectations, with data center revenue nearly doubling, but the market wasn’t looking at fundamentals at all. All 11 sectors of the S&P 500 declined, and panic spread from chips to everything else.

BTC followed suit.

CoinGecko data showed that BTC fell from about $80,300 to an intraday low of about $75,200, and closed the day at $76,000, down about 5.5% from the previous day. In 24 hours, over $1 billion in liquidations occurred, with nearly 90% being long positions, approximately 210,000 people were force liquidated.

The transmission path is not complex: tech stock panic, institutions sell BTC ETFs, ETF outflows trigger on-chain leverage to be force liquidated, causing prices to decline rapidly. Farside data shows that from October 30 to November 5, net outflows from BTC ETFs totaled about $1.5 billion. October 30 was also the day tech stocks plummeted, with Intel dropping about 29% due to an earnings guidance miss, leading to ETF outflows of $643 million that day.

The source of the crypto crash that day was not on-chain.

02 The Decoupling Promised Was Reversed in Two Months

In February of this year, BTC fell to about $60,000, halving from last October's historical high of $126,000. Grayscale's research director Zach Pandl stated in a report on February 9: For at least the past 12 months, BTC's price movements have been highly correlated with early overvalued tech stocks. He suggested that this pullback was more about risk reduction in growth-oriented portfolios, not a unique issue for crypto.

By the end of August, the same person provided a completely different set of data. Over the past three months, the degree of correlation in BTC and gold's price movements rose from nearly 0 at the beginning of the year to over 50%, while its correlation with the Nasdaq 100 dropped from over 60% to about 33%. The backdrop was the U.S. federal total debt surpassing $40 trillion in August, with market anxiety over debt leading funds to flow into "scarce assets."

The market interpretation: BTC finally decoupled from tech stocks and moved towards gold.

Two months later, K33 Research poured cold water on this. On October 21, they found that BTC's correlation with the Nasdaq rose again, with two-week returns nearly identical. At that time, BTC's 28-day volatility fell to 1.2%, close to the year's low. Research director Vetle Lunde said, "Recent relative resilience does not mean it has truly decoupled from the stock market," and reminded that "after volatility compression comes the usual explosion."

Then came November 5. The Nasdaq 100 fell about 6.5%, BTC fell about 5.5%, while gold slightly rose 0.9%. BTC was tracking the Nasdaq, not gold.

This is not the first time.

In early 2022, data company Kaiko found that BTC and Nasdaq's ups and downs were highly synchronized, with the degree of correlation reaching the highest since July 2020. During the same period, BTC's correlation with gold was actually negative. The notion of "digital gold" was first punctured by data.

During the tariff shock in April 2025, BTC briefly decoupled, rising 13% while Nasdaq remained flat; Bernstein analysts called this performance "noteworthy." However, after the tariff pause, the correlation quickly rebounded. The reference point for the U.S. stock crash on November 5 was April 2025—two shocks of the same magnitude, BTC stood firm the first time, but not the second.

Different institutions measure correlation using different time windows. Grayscale looks at 90 days, K33 looks at two-week returns. Change the window, and the conclusion changes. The same Zach Pandl that in February described BTC as "more like growth stocks" described it in August as "moving towards gold," making two conflicting statements in the same year.

Correlation is not a conclusion; it is continuously flipping over.

03 BTC and Gold Bottom Out Together This Year

Creative Planning's chief market strategist Charlie Bilello provided an asset ranking chart on October 23: Among 21 asset classes, BTC fell 7.3% this year, and gold fell 7.5%, both tying for last place. During the same period, short-term U.S. Treasury bonds rose by 2.9%, and a basket of commodities rose by 52.5%. As of the close on November 5, BTC's year-to-date decline had increased to about 13%.

His evaluation: "Since 2011, there has never been a year where both BTC and gold bottomed out together."

According to traditional understanding, when stocks fall, money should flow into gold and Bitcoin. But this year both fell together, with real profits made in oil and commodities. The safe-haven label does not work well in an inflationary environment.

Gold itself has not fared much better. It reached an all-time high of about $5,600 in January, then fell to about $4,095 by November 5, a decline of about 27% from its peak.

During the Iran war in March, oil prices surged by 63%, inflation concerns pushed up U.S. Treasury yields, and the strengthening dollar forced leveraged investors to sell gold for cash. Gold had its worst performance since October 2008 that month. Among the two "safe-haven assets," one was brought down by war.

But in the same March, BTC did not follow the decline. Grayscale's April report titled "Resilience in War" showed that major stock indices, bonds, and precious metals all fell, while crypto slightly rose. Their explanation was that BTC had already cleared a lot of risk positions in the preceding months and, combined with the strategy of buying about 44,400 BTC that month, the buying pressure sustained the price.

In the same year, BTC did not drop with stocks in March, but then fell with tech stocks in November. "Digital gold" is not a fixed attribute but rather a state that switches back and forth.

Looking within the same week is even more telling. On November 4, after the election results were announced, BTC rebounded, gold rose about 3%, and the Dow Jones rose 3%, with all three increasing together. On November 5, the wind changed; BTC fell about 5.5%, the Nasdaq 100 fell about 6.5%, and gold rose 0.9%. First, they moved up together, then BTC fell separately with tech stocks.

04 What Exactly is BTC?

On February 9, Grayscale's research director Zach Pandl laid out the question in a report:
"Is BTC a store of value asset like gold, or a growth asset like tech stocks? The short answer: we believe it is both."

An honest answer. BTC indeed switches back and forth between the two identities—sustained the impact of war in March, but fell in November with tech stocks.

The risk asset side is easy to see. After the approval of spot ETFs, institutional funds flooded in, and BTC's trend increasingly resembled that of a high-volatility tech stock. When the market rises, BTC rises more; when the market dips, BTC falls even harder.

The numbers are direct. On October 30, as tech stocks plummeted, there was a net outflow of $643 million from BTC ETFs; on November 5, as it fell again, over $430 million flowed out. Each time the institution's attitude changes, the ETF directly passes the pressure onto BTC's price.

Before the elections, Grayscale also proposed that opinion: Only about 15% to 20% of global crypto activities take place in the U.S., and regardless of the election results, crypto will continue to move forward. However, the movement on November 5 indicated that U.S. market sentiment could still transmit through ETFs to global BTC prices.

The store of value aspect needs a longer time frame. Bilello's data shows that since 2011, BTC's average annual return has been 120.6%, while gold's is only 6.3%. Excluding short-term volatility, BTC has outpaced inflation far more than gold.

Even JPMorgan has started to face reality. In October, they included BTC in their long-term capital market assumptions for the first time, giving a baseline annualized return of 10% over the next ten years, higher than the 7.5% for U.S. large-cap stocks. However, JPMorgan also left room for caution: volatility is 55%, correlation is unstable, and they have not included BTC in their main portfolio models.

Pandl wrote in that February report: "If BTC succeeds as a currency asset in the long term, its price behavior may eventually resemble that of gold."

Pay attention to the word "if." BTC is only 17 years old and has not yet achieved the same status as gold.

Three indicators to watch continuously:

• Whether the 90-day correlation between BTC and the Nasdaq 100 maintains above 0.5;
• Whether there is a net outflow from spot ETFs for more than a week;
• When the next tech stocks surge or plummet, whether BTC follows along or acts independently like it did in March.

17 years is still not enough for it to grow into itself.

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