For months, Bitcoin tracked stocks so closely that owning it felt like holding a more volatile version of the Nasdaq. That relationship is showing cracks.
Benzinga reported that Bitcoin has jumped about 13% over the past two weeks, climbing back above $71,000, while the S&P 500 is down roughly 0.2% over the same period. Gold gained just 1.6%.
The rebound started around February 24, when all three assets pulled back together. Since then, Bitcoin has separated from the pack.
Part of it is simple math. Bitcoin fell so hard for so long — it dropped from its $126,000 all-time high in October to below $61,000 in early February — that a bounce was overdue. But analysts say the Iran conflict is adding something new to the equation.
When the U.S. and Israel struck Iran, oil prices surged and stocks sold off. Bitcoin initially dropped too.
But then it held. While the Nikkei fell more than 6% in one session, Bitcoin stayed near $67,000. A market analysis published March 10 noted that Bitcoin's resilience during the oil shock is "reinforcing its emerging role as a geopolitical hedge for institutional allocators."
The idea: when governments weaponize financial systems and energy supplies, an asset that exists outside any country's control looks different than it did last year.
The case against reading too much into this is real. Bitcoin's correlation with the S&P 500 hit 0.74 as recently as March 6, according to Bloomberg — meaning it was moving almost in lockstep with equities just days before the divergence started.
Spot ETFs still hold $88 billion in Bitcoin, and those institutional investors have shown they'll sell when things get scary.
Two weeks of outperformance doesn't make Bitcoin a safe haven. But it's the first serious test of that thesis in a long time.
