Bitcoin a tech trade for now, not digital gold, says Grayscale

Bitcoin’s BTC$68,720.34 slide to around $60,000 earlier this month looked familiar, not to gold bugs, but to tech investors, crypto asset manager Grayscale said in a Monday report.

As high-growth software stocks sold off, bitcoin fell in near lockstep, reinforcing the view that, for now, the world’s largest cryptocurrency trades more like an emerging technology than a mature store of value, the report said.

The cryptocurrency’s design, capped supply, independence from governments and a resilient, decentralized network, gives it the long-term qualities of a store of value. But at just 17 years old, bitcoin is still early in its monetary journey, especially compared with gold’s millennia-long history, the firm argued.

“Bitcoin can be considered a long-term store of value: the network will likely continue operating well beyond our lifetimes and the asset may retain its value in real terms,” wrote analyst Zach Pandl.

The crypto’s claim to being digital gold has looked increasingly thin in recent months. Rather than serving as a safe haven, it has fallen sharply from its highs and moved in tandem with risk assets as investors turned defensive.

At the same time, physical gold has surged to record levels, drawing inflows just as bitcoin saw capital exit. The split has weakened the case that the cryptocurrency reliably holds value during market stress, suggesting that scarcity alone has yet to make it behave like gold when protection matters most.

Investing in bitcoin today is fundamentally a bet on adoption, Pandl said. Until bitcoin is widely accepted as a global monetary asset, its price will likely remain sensitive to risk appetite, rising and falling with growth-oriented portfolios rather than acting as a hedge during market stress.

Recent market mechanics support that view. The report pointed to U.S.-led selling pressure, outflows from spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and a sharp deleveraging across crypto derivatives, signals that look more like a growth unwind than a crisis of confidence in the network itself.

Spot bitcoin ETFs have logged a sustained run of outflows, pointing to a cooling in institutional appetite. In recent weeks, U.S.-listed funds have shed hundreds of millions of dollars as investors pulled back amid market volatility and falling prices. The withdrawals have dragged down total assets under management and left many positions underwater, underscoring softer demand for ETF-based bitcoin exposure even as inflows continue elsewhere in crypto.

Looking ahead, Grayscale sees the foundations of a recovery forming beyond short-term price action. Regulatory momentum around stablecoins and tokenized assets, combined with continued innovation in blockchain infrastructure, could drive the next phase of adoption. Platforms such as Ethereum and Solana, along with middleware like Chainlink, stand to benefit, the firm said.

Bitcoin’s own long-term test is still unfolding. Questions around scaling, fees and even quantum resistance loom large. But the report argued that if the crypto clears those hurdles, its volatility should fall, correlations with equities should fade and its behavior may eventually resemble gold’s, just with a digital backbone.

Wall Street bank JPMorgan said the crypto’s lower volatility relative to gold could make it “more attractive” in the long term.

Read more: JPMorgan says bitcoin’s lower volatility relative to gold might make it ‘more attractive’ in long term