February 10, 2026
The Bitcoin drawdown underway since early October accelerated over the last two weeks. Bitcoinโs price touched a new local low of about $60,000 on February 5thโequating to a peak-to-trough drawdown of more than 50%โbefore partially rebounding in recent days. Recent changes in the price of Bitcoin have been tightly correlated to those of software stocks (see chart).
The correlation raises a natural question: Is Bitcoin more of a store of value like gold or a growth asset like tech stocks? The short answer: We believe itโs both. Bitcoin is a digital currency and digital payments system with attributes akin to monetary gold, including supply scarcity and autonomy from nation states. It has demonstrated remarkable resilience across boom/bust cycles, against potential attackers, and in the face of many competitors. Bitcoin is open-source, highly decentralized, and supported by a network physical infrastructure that has achieved enormous scale. That network will be operating well beyond our lifetimes, and the asset may retain its value in real terms (i.e., accounting for inflation) in a wide range of economic outcomes. In this sense it can be analogized to โdigital gold.โ
That being said, the fact that Bitcoin moved in lockstep with software stocks during the latest selloff suggests the drawdown likely had more to do with broad derisking of growth-oriented portfolios rather than problems unique to crypto. In other words, although Bitcoinโs use is akin to gold, many investors associate it with public blockchain technology more broadly, a high-tech industry experiencing secular growth. For more on this, see our publication Market Byte: Bitcoin Trading More Like Growth Than Gold, which you can read here.
Key Takeaway: Bitcoin is a unique asset class. We still believe it is a long-term store of value. But its โproximityโ to tech is prompting it to act like a growth equity lately. The good news? We think thereโs a good chance it will bounce back with a recovery in risk-taking.
Bitcoinโs price has been moving closely with software stocks
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