Bitcoin Ditches The Pack: Risk Assets Down, BTC Holds Steady

Bitcoin has maintained its price above $80,000 despite a massive sell-off in US stocks last week, sparking debate about its changing relationship with traditional risk assets.

The US stock market lost $2.85 trillion on April 3, followed by another staggering drop of $3.25 trillion by the end of Friday’s trading session. According to market analysts, this represents the worst two-day market decline in five years. The sell-off came in response to US President Donald Trump’s tariff increases, which sent investors rushing to pull their money out of stocks.

But while stocks fell, Bitcoin took a different path. The cryptocurrency remained stable, even seeing price increases during this period. As of the latest trading data, BTC is priced at $83,205, showing a 1.3% increase over the past week.

In what some market watchers call a surprising turn, cryptocurrency markets received about $5.4 billion in new investments on Friday alone. This happened at the exact time investors were pulling billions from stocks, suggesting a possible shift in how people view the top crypto during uncertain times.

Even gold, which had recently hit a record high of $3,167 on April 3, dropped sharply to around $3,000 during Friday’s market troubles. Based on reports, Bitcoin’s price stability while both stocks and gold fell has caught the attention of many financial experts.

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart highlighted Bitcoin’s unexpected strength in an X post on April 4. He wrote that he was “genuinely shocked” by Bitcoin’s ability to remain above $80,000 while other assets fell.

Genuinely shocked a bit by Bitcoin’s resilience. Would not have guessed it would hold above $80k in this type of broader market selloff of risk assets…

Hell — even Gold is down? pic.twitter.com/SKRkZF8hCb

— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) April 4, 2025

Adam Back, co-founder of Blockstream, suggested this might signal that Bitcoin is finally breaking its pattern of following stock market movements. He proposed that market makers might be taking advantage of limited cash in the system to adjust Bitcoin’s typical correlation with stocks.

#bitcoin decoupling finally. was thinking the coupling was fake. maybe market makers using bitcoin market shortage of fiat liquidity to auto-correlate bitcoin, noticeable on US market open.

— Adam Back (@adam3us) April 4, 2025

According to the report, Bitcoin’s price stability might be linked to ongoing purchases by major companies. Strategy has returned to buying Bitcoin weekly after a brief pause, now in its third consecutive week of acquisitions.

Game retailer GameStop made headlines recently when it disclosed Bitcoin as its primary treasury asset. The company is seeking to raise $1.3 billion to acquire more Bitcoin, a Bloomberg analyst said.

These institutional purchasing trends might be generating sufficient demand to sustain Bitcoin prices despite pressure on conventional markets. Ongoing institutional demand indicates increasing confidence in Bitcoin as a store of value amidst market uncertainty.

Featured image from Gemini Imagen, chart from TradingView