There are still a few hours to go, Bitcoin is on track to record its worst losing streak since 2018, and February is about to mark a fifth consecutive monthly decline.
The losing streak would be the longest since the 2018-2019 bear market and follows what has already been the worst 50-day start to the year on record for Bitcoin, leaving BTC down more than 25% so far this year and on track for its first consecutive drops in January and February.
Further? The bitcoin-gold ratio fell to 12,288 ounces in February, which is a 70% drop in the last 14 months.
Bitcoin is also poised to close out its worst month since June 2022, as the Terra-Luna collapse that year caused the price to drop by about a third. With bitcoin currently at around $66,000, the drop this February is more than 16%.
But some analysts argue that comparing the current stretch with that of 2018 may be an oversimplification of what is developing.
Revaluation within a change of structural regime
“What we are seeing is not just weakness. It is a revaluation within a structural regime change,” Mati Greenspan, senior market analyst at eToro and founder of Quantum Economics, told CoinDesk.
He believes that while tariffs, ETF flows and macroeconomic fears may explain the timing of the sell-off, they do not explain the deeper move, which he sees as a broader recalibration in how markets value risk assets in an era of heightened uncertainty.
Bitcoin is also approaching a fifth consecutive weekly decline, a streak last seen between March and May 2022.
Geopolitical tensions have strengthened the US dollar and crude oil prices, tightening financial conditions and weighing on risk assets.
However, this slowdown stands out for another reason: bitcoin’s uneven relationship with stocks. While US stocks have remained relatively resilient, BTC has sharply underperformed, marking an unusual period of instability in its traditional risk-to-asset correlation.
Face arguments
“Bitcoin has no narrative right now and is being squeezed by both sides,” Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT, said in an email to CoinDesk.
Randin pointed to growing macroeconomic pressure, including $3.8 billion outflows from ETFs in the past five weeks, escalating tariff tensions and a Federal Reserve that has yet to signal imminent rate cuts.
While gold has attracted safe-haven flows and stocks have capitalized on AI momentum, bitcoin has lagged. “Gold is up about 48% since September, while bitcoin is down about 41% over the same period,” Randin said, explaining that the divergence shows that investors are still treating BTC as a liquidity-sensitive risk asset rather than digital gold.
The correlation picture has been volatile. “The 20-day BTC-Nasdaq correlation ranged from -0.68 to +0.72 between early and mid-February. That’s not decorrelation, that’s instability,” Randin said. “When the risk trade is working and an asset lags, that is usually weakness, not strength.”
The narrative “has not changed since 2009. It is a global, neutral alternative to debt-based fiat systems,” according to Greenspan.
The decorrelations are not random.
“When correlations break down during regime changes, it’s generally not random. It’s an early repricing,” Greenspan said. “If equities are still treated as a cyclical growth exposure while bitcoin starts to trade more as a sovereign hedge, that divergence is structurally bullish.”
Despite the magnitude of the drop, Randin cautioned against assuming the correction is over.
“Bitcoin is now down 52% from October highs,” he said. “That seems like a lot, but when you look at previous bear markets, where we’ve seen declines of 80% or more, we might actually be only halfway through this correction.”
He added that while the weekly Relative Strength Index (RSI) has fallen to its lowest reading in bitcoin history and accumulator addresses have absorbed approximately 372,000 BTC since late December, signs often associated with cycle lows, similar conditions in past recessions were followed by another 30% to 40% drop before a definitive low formed.
Greenspan, however, said the sentiment may already reflect much of the pessimism. “When sentiment turns uniformly negative while long-term fundamentals remain intact, pullbacks tend to be sharp,” he said.
Until bitcoin can reclaim the $68,000 to $72,000 zone, Randin said, “I would expect this streak to continue rather than break cleanly.” It identified $60,000 as a key short-term support level, with the 200-week moving average near $58,500 just below it.
“The narrative of the losing streak is focused on five months,” Greenspan added. “The structural history spans decades.”
