Bitcoin: Cathie Wood Reveals the Signal Everyone Is Missing

Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest, argued in early February 2026 that Bitcoin’s current lack of correlation with gold is not a weakness, but a signal.

Wood pointed out that since 2019–2020, Bitcoin and gold have maintained a very low correlation of roughly 0.14, meaning the two assets are no longer moving together in a meaningful way. While gold has surged to new highs, Bitcoin remains roughly 50% below its peak, creating a visible divergence between the two.

Rather than viewing this disconnect as bearish for Bitcoin, Wood framed it as a familiar historical setup.

Gold Has Historically Moved First

According to Wood’s analysis, gold has led the last two major Bitcoin bull cycles, with strong gold performance preceding large Bitcoin rallies rather than occurring simultaneously.

The chart she referenced shows multiple instances where gold began rising first, followed months later by aggressive Bitcoin upside. In this framework, gold strength reflects early-stage risk repositioning, while Bitcoin reacts later with greater volatility and magnitude.

From this perspective, the fact that gold is currently strong while Bitcoin lags is consistent with prior cycle behavior, not a deviation from it.

Scarcity Dynamics Favor Bitcoin Over Gold

Wood emphasized a structural distinction between the two assets. Gold supply can expand when prices rise, as miners increase production in response to economic incentives. Bitcoin, by contrast, has a mathematically fixed issuance schedule, governed entirely by protocol rules rather than market conditions.

This fixed supply profile underpins Wood’s view that Bitcoin is structurally more scarce than gold, particularly in environments where investors are seeking long-term protection against monetary expansion.

Gold at Historical Extremes

As of February 2026, Wood noted that gold’s market capitalization relative to U.S. M2 money supply has reached approximately 150%–170%, levels last seen during the Great Depression.

Historically, periods where gold reached such extremes were followed by long stretches in which other assets, particularly equities, outperformed gold. Wood suggested this context matters when evaluating future relative returns between gold and alternative scarcity assets like Bitcoin.

Institutional Rotation Thesis

Based on these conditions, Wood argued that aggressive investors may consider rotating from gold into Bitcoin in 2026, expecting Bitcoin to deliver superior performance due to its asymmetric upside and growing institutional adoption.

She framed Bitcoin not as a direct substitute for gold, but as a higher-volatility evolution of the same scarcity thesis, positioned to benefit later in the cycle once risk appetite returns more fully.

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Diversification Metrics Support the Case

ARK Invest’s 2026 analysis highlights Bitcoin’s role as a portfolio diversifier, supported by persistently low correlations across major asset classes.

Between 2020 and 2026:

• Bitcoin–Gold correlation stood at 0.14
• Bitcoin–Bonds at 0.06
• Bitcoin–S&P 500 at 0.28

These figures contrast sharply with traditional asset pairings such as S&P 500–REITs, which show a correlation of 0.79, underscoring Bitcoin’s distinct behavior within diversified portfolios.

Cathie Wood’s argument is not that Bitcoin should be tracking gold, but that it historically never has when it matters most. Gold’s strength, combined with Bitcoin’s underperformance and low correlation, mirrors prior setups that preceded major Bitcoin rallies.

In Wood’s framework, the disconnect itself is the message: gold moves first, Bitcoin follows later, and usually with force.

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