BTC Correlation with Gold Rises

The Bitcoin safe haven narrative may be back as data shows the cryptocurrency’s correlation with gold has increased in recent months.

Bitcoin correlation to gold has increased over the past year

According to the latest weekly report from Glassnode, the correlation between the two assets remained high during the recent US banking crisis. The “BTC to Gold Correlation” indicates how closely Bitcoin follows the movements that take place in the price of a troy ounce of gold.

When the value of this metric is negative, it means that BTC is currently reacting to movements in the price of gold by traveling in the opposite direction. On the other hand, positive values ​​of the indicator suggest that the two assets are moving in a similar path right now.

Naturally, when the correlation is zero, it suggests that there is no pattern regarding how the cryptocurrency and gold move relative to each other.

Now, here’s a chart showing the trend of the 30-day Bitcoin correlation to gold, as well as the 90-day and 365-day versions, over the past few years:

Looks like the value of the metric has been quite high in recent days | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 16, 2023

The chart above uses the symbol “XAU”, but note that this term refers to a troy ounce of gold here and not the Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index.

As shown in the graph, the Bitcoin correlation to gold did not show much strong positive correlation during the 2021 bull run, as the calculation had assumed negative values ​​for a decent part of the period.

The correlation also remained weak in the early months of 2022, but things began to change as the bear market took hold. Over the past twelve months, the indicator has mostly recorded high positive values, which suggests that the two assets have become strongly linked during this period.

However, the FTX crash provided one exception, as the indicator’s value had turned deep red around the time it occurred. Nevertheless, with the rally this year, the assets quickly became highly correlated again, as all three MAs (30-day, 90-day and 365-day) reached positive values.

Gold has traditionally been considered a safe haven, while stocks and BTC have generally been considered risky investments. With the correlation between Bitcoin and gold running high recently, it appears that the Digital Gold narrative may be making a comeback.

Interestingly, the correlation also remained high during the US banking crisis some time ago, when institutions such as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and rocked the market. This could be further evidence that BTC was viewed in a better light recently.

“This suggests that an appreciation of both good money and the realities of counterparty risk are increasingly front of mind for investors,” notes Glassnode.

BTC price

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $29,500, up 1% in the past week.

BTC seems to have plunged during the past day | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Aleksi Räisä at Unsplash.com, Charts from TradingView.com, Glassnode.com