Gold vs Bitcoin in the 2025–2026 sell-offs: which one actually held up?

The "digital gold" question

The case for Bitcoin as "digital gold" is simple: a fixed supply, no central bank and no company behind it, so it should hold its value when traditional assets are under stress. Gold has played that role for centuries. If the comparison is right, the two should behave similarly when stock markets fall.

2025 and 2026 offered several real-world tests. We compared daily prices of Bitcoin, gold futures, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100 from January 2024 to November 2026, looking at single bad days, whole episodes and how the relationships changed over time.

The big picture

The last two years were very different for the two assets. In 2025 gold had one of its best years on record, rising 62.6%, while Bitcoin finished the year 9.6% lower despite setting an all-time high of about $124,700 in October. In 2026 both have fallen – Bitcoin by 14.6% and gold by 8.6% so far – while US stocks gained for a third year in a row.

On the stock market's worst days

The S&P 500 fell more than 2% on nine days in 2025–2026. On those days:

• Gold rose a median of 0.7% and was up on five of the nine days.
• Bitcoin fell a median of 3.6% and was up on four of the nine days – but its losses were large when they came: −9.5% on 10 March 2025, −7.3% on 10 October 2025 (during a record wave of forced liquidations in crypto) and −7.5% on 20 January 2026. On all three days gold fell 0.5% at most or rose.

Across all days in 2025–2026, Bitcoin moved about 1.1 times as much as the S&P 500 (its beta). More telling is the asymmetry: on days when stocks fell, Bitcoin fell 1.55 times as much on average; on days they rose, it gained 1.21 times as much. Gold moved only 0.27 times as much as stocks on down days and 0.47 times on up days.

Three sell-offs, three different stories

The April 2025 tariff crash. Between 2 and 8 April 2025, after sweeping US tariff announcements, the S&P 500 fell 12.1% and the Nasdaq-100 12.7%. Bitcoin fell 7.5% and gold 5.6% – gold dropped too, as investors sold what they could to raise cash. In this episode Bitcoin did hold up better than stocks, and on the two worst days for the S&P 500 (3 and 4 April) it actually rose slightly.

The Bitcoin bear market. From its peak on 6 October 2025 to its low on 30 June 2026, Bitcoin fell 53%. Over the same period gold rose 1.6% and the S&P 500 11.3%. This was a crypto-specific decline: stocks did not need to fall for Bitcoin to lose half its value.

Gold's correction. Gold futures peaked at about $5,318 on 29 January 2026 and fell 26.7% to about $3,957 by 30 October 2026. Bitcoin lost 8.6% in that window and the S&P 500 gained 8.8%. Gold, too, can fall hard after a big run.

Starting to move together

For most of 2024 and 2025, Bitcoin's daily moves had almost nothing to do with gold's: their 90-day correlation hovered between −0.01 and 0.24. Bitcoin's correlation with the S&P 500 was consistently higher, around 0.4–0.6. In the second half of 2026 the picture changed: the Bitcoin–gold correlation rose to about 0.5, higher than Bitcoin's correlation with stocks (about 0.4). Both assets fell in the same weeks – for example the week to 5 June 2026, when Bitcoin dropped 16.9% and gold 5.0%. It is too early to say whether this is a lasting shift or a temporary one.

What this means

1. On the stock market's worst days in 2025–2026, gold was usually the better shelter; Bitcoin tended to fall more than stocks.
2. Bitcoin can still hold up in some stock sell-offs – it did in the April 2025 tariff crash – but its biggest losses came from crypto-specific events.
3. Gold is not risk-free: after a record 2025 it fell more than a quarter in 2026.
4. In late 2026 the two have moved together more than at any time in the period we studied.

The comparison covers less than three years, an unusual period for both assets. For live levels and volatility ranges, see our gold, Bitcoin and S&P 500 pages, and our study on Bitcoin's long-term volatility.