Bitcoin’s recent trading pattern has left many bulls frustrated: it tends to sink sharply when stocks decline but barely moves when equities rally — and the data confirms this imbalance.
For months, the cryptocurrency has shadowed the Nasdaq 100 on the downside while failing to capture much of the upside. The trend continued this week. The Nasdaq dropped 2% on Thursday, triggering a bitcoin sell-off twice as large. Yet Friday’s modest rebound in tech stocks barely lifted bitcoin.
As 2025 nears its final stretch, the Nasdaq 100 is up 20% year-to-date. Bitcoin, by contrast, is up only 3%, struggling to keep pace with the broader risk rally.
Not a Correlation Breakdown — an Asymmetry Problem
Wintermute researcher Jasper De Maere says bitcoin hasn’t detached from the Nasdaq at all. Correlation remains strong near 0.8. The issue lies in how bitcoin reacts to risk.
“This isn’t a breakdown of correlation, but a reflection of asymmetry, the uneven way BTC responds to risk,” De Maere explained. “When equities rally, BTC’s reaction is muted. When they sell off, BTC tends to move more sharply in the same direction.”
To measure this, he uses “performance skew” — a gauge of whether bitcoin outperforms in risk-on environments (positive skew) or underperforms during risk-off conditions (negative skew).
Skew has been deeply negative for an extended stretch. De Maere charted how often bitcoin displays positive skew relative to the Nasdaq over a 365-day rolling window. That percentage has now fallen to its lowest point since the late-2022 bear-market bottom.
Several forces are contributing: diminished speculative interest as traders chase equity gains, slowing ETF inflows, flatlining stablecoin supply, and thinning liquidity across exchanges.
A Sign of Exhaustion — and Maybe a Bottom
Despite the grim setup, the pattern might actually point to a constructive outcome.
“Historically, this kind of negative asymmetry doesn’t appear near tops but rather shows up near bottoms,” De Maere said. “When BTC falls harder on bad equity days than it rises on good ones, it usually signals exhaustion, not strength.”
In his view, the ongoing BTC–Nasdaq skew indicates investor fatigue — a condition that has often emerged near major turning points in past cycles.
