It Was a Big Month for Decoupling — a Term for Bitcoin's Divergence from Tech Stocks' Performance

Bitcoin was up 13% in April, outperforming gold, which gained 7.5%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, meanwhile, has dropped 0.1% over the last 30 days.

Bitcoin price rose 13% in April, outperforming both gold and the Nasdaq, according to a Monday report by crypto analytics firm Glassnode.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 0.1% over the last 30 days, while gold gained 7.5%.

Analysts have noticed the shift in Bitcoin’s performance relative to major assets and equities in recent statements.

“Big boy institutions are waiting for [Bitcoin] to behave like a safe haven,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas noted. “When it does, look out.”

US President Donald Trump’s tempestuous tariff regime, which began on April 2 with his “liberation day” announcement, caused chaos in markets and shook many longstanding assumptions, such as the primacy of US dollars in global finance.

The DXY Index, which measures the strength of the dollar against a basket of major currencies, was down 4.3% across April.

The turmoil has left investors searching for a safe alternative to US dollars and US debt. Bitcoin is seen as a beneficiary of the search both in terms of price action and volatility.

Bitcoin’s market outperformance relative to the Nasdaq throughout the US’s tariff crisis this year has been “striking,” said Bernstein analysts in a note to investors this month. David Lawant, head of research at FalconX, highlighted Bitcoin’s “low beta,” or volatility, throughout April, in an interview with Bloomberg.

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, wrote on Tuesday that he expects wirehouses — enormous, full-service financial firms like Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, and UBS — to allow their customers access to Bitcoin exchange-traded funds this year.

“It’s one of the reasons I still expect bitcoin ETFs to set a new record for net inflows this year, despite pulling in ‘just’ $3.7 billion so far in 2025, compared to $35 billion in 2024,” wrote Hougan.

In a Monday note, Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at UK bank Standard Chartered, wrote that a confluence of factors could be driving the Bitcoin-as-digital-gold narrative to the fore and Bitcoin to new highs.

“Analysis suggests US investors themselves are divesting out of US assets,” Kendrick wrote.

“Whales are accumulating, flows out of gold ETFs and into BTC ETFs have started.”

Kendrick predicted a price of $120,000 per coin in the second quarter of this year.