For months now, bitcoin has followed a pattern frustratingly familiar to bulls: seemingly overly correlated with the Nasdaq 100 when that stock indicator fell, but losing almost all correlation when the major tech index rose.
This week was no different: the Nasdaq fell 2% on Thursday and bitcoin fell twice as much. Then Friday saw a modest rally for tech stocks, one that Bitcoin didn’t come close to matching.
Heading into the final six weeks of 2025, year-to-date gains for the Nasdaq 100 now stand at 20%, while Bitcoin is barely in the green, up just 3%.
A reflection of asymmetry
What’s happening, according to a report this week from Wintermute’s Jasper De Maere, is not a loss of correlation with the Nasdaq 100, which remains high at around 0.8.
“This is not a break in correlation, but a reflection of asymmetry, the uneven way BTC responds to risk,” De Maere said. “When stocks rise, BTC’s reaction is muted. When they sell off, BTC tends to move more sharply in the same direction.”
De Maere measures this through “return bias,” with “positive bias” being bitcoin outperforming in a risk environment and “negative bias” being bitcoin lagging in a risk-averse environment.
It will come as no surprise to anyone paying attention that the bias has been solidly negative for some time.
Trying to put a number on it, Da Maere plotted the percentage of days out of 365 consecutive days that BTC has experienced a positive return bias against the Nasdaq.
What he found is that it has fallen to levels not seen since the last major bear market in late 2022.
Why so bad? Da Maere suggests a loss of mindset for bitcoin, as both institutional and retail speculative appetites have been largely satisfied in stocks. There are also liquidity issues, as ETF inflows have slowed, stablecoin issuance has stalled, and market depth across all exchanges still remains below early 2024 levels.
Hopeful outlook
“Historically, this type of negative asymmetry does not appear near highs, but rather near lows,” Da Maere concluded. “When BTC falls more on bad stock days than on good ones, it generally indicates exhaustion, not strength.”
“The current bias in BTC/Nasdaq performance suggests that BTC investors are somewhat exhausted and have been for a while.”
