Cathie Wood argues Bitcoin's zero correlation with gold since 2020 is a feature, not a bug. What if independence is the real signal?

Why Bitcoin Ignoring Gold Might Be the Real Signal

In early February 2026, Cathie Wood from ARK Invest made a case that runs counter to a lot of mainstream criticism around Bitcoin. She pointed out that since roughly 2019–2020, Bitcoin and gold have maintained a correlation close to zero. For most analysts, that's been framed as a liability—proof that Bitcoin hasn't matured into the "digital gold" narrative or that it fails as a reliable hedge during uncertainty.

Wood sees it differently. She argues the lack of correlation is the signal, not the noise. Gold moves on inflation prints, Fed policy, currency debasement fears, geopolitical flare-ups. Bitcoin moves on liquidity, adoption, regulatory shifts, technological upgrades, and sentiment cycles that have little to do with traditional macro fear gauges. They're both scarce. They're both positioned as alternatives to fiat. But they respond to entirely different inputs.

What's interesting here is the assumption we've been carrying: that Bitcoin should correlate with gold to be legitimate. But if Bitcoin is genuinely a new asset class—not just a digital version of an old one—then independence might be the whole point. If it moved in lockstep with gold, it would just be redundant. The zero correlation could mean Bitcoin is doing exactly what it's supposed to: behaving like nothing else. Wood's framing asks whether we've been grading Bitcoin on the wrong test. Maybe the divergence is the feature.