Bitcoin to Bond Yields: "It's Not You, It's Me" 📉

Bitcoin has shown little consistent correlation with government bond yields over the long term, according to data reviewed by CoinDesk, even as a global bond sell-off this week pushed the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield to its highest level since 2007. The 10-year jumped 15 basis points on Wednesday to above 5.13%, dragging yields higher across major sovereign markets and amplifying pressure on heavily indebted economies, while Switzerland's low federal debt has reinforced the franc's safe-haven status.

The standard market interpretation holds that climbing yields raise the cost of holding non-yielding assets such as bitcoin and gold, pulling capital toward bonds. The 90-day correlation between bitcoin's daily returns and daily moves in the U.S. 10-year yield is −0.18, according to CoinDesk analysis, while the 180-day figure is −0.06 and the one-year figure is −0.03. Lacie Zhang, research lead at Bitget Wallet, told CoinDesk that "Bitcoin's near-zero correlation with U.S. Treasury yields is a genuine portfolio advantage because it suggests BTC is not simply trading as a duration or rates asset," noting the 90-day correlation has at times moved even closer to zero.

Short-term dynamics tell a different story. A 21% surge in Treasury market volatility helped drag bitcoin from $87,200 to $83,500 on Wednesday, with the BTC spot price quoted at $84,021.16. Bitcoin is up 191% since 2021 and reached a record $126,000 last October, moves that occurred even as 10-year yields climbed more than 500 basis points in both the U.K. and France.

Strong U.S. economic data drove the latest leg higher in yields and renewed focus on the opportunity-cost argument against non-yielding assets, though the lack of a durable statistical link between bitcoin and bond yields challenges that framing. Analysts cited by CoinDesk have repeatedly pointed to bitcoin's low correlation with traditional fixed-income benchmarks as a feature that can improve portfolio risk-adjusted returns, a position major investment banks have held for years.

Continued turbulence in the bond market could still produce further losses for crypto in the near term, even if bitcoin's multi-year relationship with government debt has remained statistically negligible.