Grayscale Research: Bitcoin's "Digital Gold" Narrative Faces Test, Price Action More Resembling High-Risk Growth Asset

BlockBeats News, February 11th, a new study released by Grayscale shows that Bitcoin's long-standing "digital gold" narrative is facing a challenge. Its recent price trend is increasingly resembling that of a high-risk growth asset rather than a traditional safe-haven asset.

Report author Zach Pandl stated on Tuesday that despite Grayscale still viewing Bitcoin as a long-term store of value based on its fixed supply and independence from the central banking system, the recent market performance is pointing in another direction.

"Bitcoin's short-term price trends have not been closely linked to gold or other precious metals," Pandl noted in the report, mentioning the historic surge in gold and silver prices recently. The analysis found that Bitcoin has formed a strong correlation with software stocks, especially since early 2024. The recent significant sell-off in the sector is due to market concerns that artificial intelligence may disrupt or replace many software services.

The report believes that the increased sensitivity of Bitcoin to stocks and growth assets reflects its deeper integration into the traditional financial markets, partly due to institutional participation, ETF activities, and changes in macroeconomic risk sentiment.

Grayscale believes that Bitcoin's recent failure to fulfill its safe-haven narrative should not be seen as a setback but rather as part of the ongoing evolution process of this asset. Pandl expressed that expecting Bitcoin to replace gold as a monetary asset in such a short time is unrealistic. "Gold has thousands of years of history as a currency and was still the cornerstone of the international monetary system until the early 1970s," he wrote. While Bitcoin's inability to reach a similar status is the "core of the investment logic," as AI, autonomous agents, and tokenized financial markets drive global digitization, Bitcoin may still gradually evolve in this direction.