Bitcoin’s correlation with gold has climbed to its highest level in six years as investors increasingly seek hedges against currency debasement, according to a new report from Bitwise. The asset manager said this week that the precious metal and the leading cryptocurrency are now trading in lockstep because the U.S. government has "materially intervened in the macro picture."

Bitcoin began surging last month after the U.S. Treasury Department announced it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. The cryptocurrency recorded its best run in three years and its third-best August ever.

JUST IN: Bitcoin's correlation with gold hit a six-year high, according to Bitwise "The last time it was this high was 2020, after the Covid stimulus." pic.twitter.com/fHtQUlR9Ol — Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) September 3, 2026 https://x.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/2095597794119533007

"The last time the bitcoin-gold correlation was that high was in 2020, following the rounds of fiscal and monetary stimulus during the Covid crisis," Bitwise’s European Head of Research, André Dragosch, wrote. He added that bitcoin’s correlation with the stock market has dropped to a one-year low, "implying some kind of decoupling between hard assets and the stock market."

Bitcoin has been promoted as "digital gold" for years, though it has at times traded alongside tech stocks as a "risk-on" asset. Correlation — a statistical measure of how closely two assets move together — has historically been volatile for bitcoin, which has alternated between behaving like a speculative tech proxy and an inflation hedge depending on the macro regime. The so-called debasement trade — in which investors buy an asset to hedge against a currency losing value — was a widely discussed strategy last year and appears to have returned.

The driver, Dragosch argued, is government intervention in markets. When the Treasury said it would attempt to rein in long-term borrowing costs, the dollar’s value slid, sending investors back into gold — and bitcoin. In the same week, the Treasury also announced that U.S. public debt had exceeded $40 trillion for the first time, a milestone that further undermines confidence in the dollar. The backdrop matters for both assets in the pairing: gold has long served as the traditional store-of-value hedge in central bank and institutional portfolios, and its renewed strength alongside bitcoin suggests hedging demand is broadening rather than confined to a single asset class.

"Investors are no longer asking whether to hedge currency debasement with gold or bitcoin. They’re simply hedging with both," the report stated. "Bitcoin spent its first fifteen years being priced as a risk asset. If this correlation trend with gold holds, the next fifteen may look very different."

Bitcoin rallied again this week and was recently trading near $81,438 after climbing almost 6% over a 24-hour period. Whether the gold-bitcoin correlation endures will depend in part on further fiscal and monetary policy decisions in Washington, the trajectory of the $40-trillion-plus debt load, and whether bitcoin continues to decouple from equities — dynamics Bitwise says it is tracking in ongoing research.

The Bitwise report is available at:

This article was first published by Bitcoin Magazine (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/news/bitcoin-gold-correlation-soars) and written by Mathew Di Salvo.