For months now, bitcoin has followed a frustratingly familiar pattern for bulls: seemingly overcorrelated with the Nasdaq 100 when that stock metric goes down, but losing almost all correlation when the main tech index goes up.
This week was no exception, with the Nasdaq falling 2% on Thursday and Bitcoin plunging twice as much. Friday then saw a modest rally for tech stocks, one that Bitcoin failed to match.
Heading into the final six weeks of 2025, the Nasdaq 100’s year-to-date gains 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 elevated at around 0.8.
“This is not a break in correlation, but a reflection of an asymmetry, of the uneven way in which BTC responds to risk,” De Maere said. “When stocks rebound, the reaction of BTC is muted. When they are sold, BTC tends to move more sharply in the same direction.”
De Maere measures this through a “performance bias,” with the “positive bias” being bitcoin outperforming in a risk environment and the “negative bias” being bitcoin lagging in a risk-free environment.
Anyone paying attention will not be surprised to learn that skewness has been solidly negative for some time.
In attempting to put a number on this figure, Da Maere plotted the percentage of days on a rolling 365-day basis that BTC experienced a positive performance gap against the Nasdaq.
What he found was that it fell to levels not seen since the bottom of the last major bear market in late 2022.
Why so bad? Da Maere suggests a loss of sanity for bitcoin, as the speculative appetites of institutional and retail investors have been quite satisfied by the stocks. There are also liquidity concerns, as ETF inflows have slowed, stablecoin issuance has plateaued, and market depth on exchanges still remains below early 2024 levels.
Hopeful outlook
“Historically, this type of negative asymmetry does not appear near the highs but rather near the lows,” Da Maere concluded. “When BTC falls more sharply on days when stocks are bad than if it rises on good days, this generally signals exhaustion, not strength.”
“The current asymmetry in BTC/Nasdaq performance suggests that BTC investors are somewhat exhausted and have been for some time.”
