Bitcoin’s recent trading behavior may feel lopsided — reacting sharply when stocks fall but barely budging when equities rally — and data shows that impression is spot on.

For months, the cryptocurrency has exhibited a pattern that has frustrated bullish traders: a strong correlation with the Nasdaq 100 on the downside, and almost no correlation on the upside. This week delivered more of the same. The Nasdaq slid 2% on Thursday, and bitcoin dropped twice as much. When tech stocks bounced modestly on Friday, bitcoin failed to participate.

As the final six weeks of 2025 begin, the Nasdaq 100 is up 20% year-to-date, while bitcoin is clinging to a small 3% gain.

Asymmetry, Not Decoupling

According to new research from Wintermute’s Jasper De Maere, bitcoin’s behavior isn’t the result of fading correlation with the Nasdaq — that correlation still sits near 0.8. Instead, it reflects an asymmetry in how bitcoin responds to risk.

“This isn’t a breakdown of correlation, but a reflection of asymmetry, the uneven way BTC responds to risk,” De Maere explained. “When equities rally, BTC’s reaction is muted. When they sell off, BTC tends to move more sharply in the same direction.”

De Maere measures this dynamic through “performance skew.” Positive skew reflects bitcoin outperforming in risk-on environments, while negative skew indicates underperformance when markets turn risk-off.

Unsurprisingly for anyone tracking the market, skew has been deeply negative for some time. De Maere analyzed the percentage of days — over a 365-day rolling window — in which bitcoin showed positive skew relative to the Nasdaq. The metric has now dropped to its lowest level since the depths of the 2022 bear market.

A combination of factors appears to be driving this weakness: fading speculative interest as both institutional and retail traders flock to equities, slowing ETF inflows, stalled stablecoin growth, and exchange liquidity that remains below early-2024 levels.

A Potentially Constructive Signal

Despite the discouraging setup, the asymmetric behavior may actually be a hopeful sign.

“Historically, this kind of negative asymmetry doesn’t appear near tops but rather shows up near bottoms,” De Maere said. “When BTC falls harder on bad equity days than it rises on good ones, it usually signals exhaustion, not strength.”

His conclusion: the current BTC–Nasdaq skew suggests bitcoin investors are fatigued — and have been for some time — a pattern that has historically emerged near market bottoms rather than tops.