When Zach Pandl, Director of Research at Grayscale, finished the last page of that report, gold prices were lying quietly near an all-time high. Over the past year, this ancient metal has risen 85%; while on the same chart, Bitcoin's curve slid in the opposite direction, falling 30%.

This does not look like a technical pullback. This is a fracture in the narrative.

1. The Core of the Grayscale Report: A Belated "Authentication"

The latest research report from Grayscale has drawn attention not because it announces some failure, but because it openly acknowledges a misalignment. The short-term price behavior of Bitcoin has completely diverged from what a “safe-haven asset” should look like.

● Pandl wrote a disturbing comparison in the report: since early 2024, the correlation curve of Bitcoin with software stocks has nearly overlapped, while its linkage with gold and silver has approached zero. This is not a statistical coincidence—when the market worries about AI disrupting traditional software services, a sell-off hits Bitcoin simultaneously; when the Federal Reserve releases hawkish signals, Bitcoin falls at least as much as the Nasdaq.

● Grayscale did not shy away from this embarrassing fact. The report states: “The short-term price movements of Bitcoin do not show a close correlation with gold or other precious metals.” Translated into market language, it means: it now resembles a high-volatility growth stock rather than something used for hedging.

● Interestingly, Grayscale did not characterize this finding as a “failure.” Pandl repeatedly emphasized a timeframe that is easily overlooked—gold took thousands of years to transform from a commodity to a monetary anchor; it wasn’t until the 1970s with the collapse of the Bretton Woods system that it truly shed its role as a pillar of the international monetary system. And Bitcoin is just 17 years old.

● “Expecting it to replace gold in such a short time is inherently unrealistic.” This sentence is written in the investment logic section of the report; it is not an excuse, but a reminder.

2. Anatomy of the Plunge: A 52% Drop and $1.2 Trillion Evaporated

If Grayscale's report is a clinical diagnosis, then the market crash in early February 2026 is the most complete medical record.

● From February 5 to 6, Bitcoin dropped directly from a weak horizontal line of $74,000, reaching a low of $60,033. The meaning of this number needs conversion: compared to the historical high of $126,000 on October 12, 2025, the cumulative drop exceeded 52%—the deeply taboo word “bear market” in the crypto market was used for the first time in the headlines of mainstream financial media.

● Accompanying the price crash was a chain explosion of leverage. According to CoinGlass statistics, the 24-hour liquidation data was $2.069 billion, with 430,000 people being liquidated, and more than 90% of positions were long. This was not a retail investor's defeat; it revealed the structural fragility accumulated during the process of institutionalization.

● A more dangerous signal appeared in the ETF channel. Deutsche Bank data showed that $7 billion flowed out of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF in the last two months of 2025, followed by another $3 billion outflow in January 2026, with $1.2 billion flowing out in just the past week. Those ETFs that were hoarding thousands of coins daily at this time last year have completely turned into net sellers this year.

● CryptoQuant calculated an account: the average cost of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF holders is about $84,100. When the price falls below $70,000, the vast majority of institutional positions are already at a loss. This is not a retail investor story about cutting losses and leaving; this is traders at BlackRock and Fidelity signing off on stop-loss orders.

3. Who Killed the "Digital Gold" Narrative?

The market is always looking for a culprit. In this round, the suspect list is long.

● The first defendant is the Federal Reserve. The news of Trump's nomination of hawkish Kevin Walsh as Federal Reserve chair directly shook the market's faith in interest rate cuts. Quantitative tightening takes precedence over rate cuts—this means that the cycle of global liquidity tightening is far from over. Citigroup's research shows that Bitcoin's price has a high correlation with U.S. bank reserves and changes in the Federal Reserve's balance sheet, with expectations of quantitative tightening hanging over the crypto market like the sword of Damocles.

● The second defendant is AI. It sounds somewhat absurd, but on the day Anthropic released version 4.6 of its financial research-capable Claude, software stocks fell in response, and Bitcoin plummeted simultaneously. The market logic is conveyed this way: if AI can replace traditional software services, then the valuation model of SaaS companies needs to be reevaluated; whereas Bitcoin’s positioning in institutional portfolios is being categorized as a “risk asset similar to high-valuation tech stocks.” When one rises, all rise; when one falls, all fall.

● The third defendant is the ETF itself. This one is the most counterintuitive. Spot ETFs were once seen as the pass to enter the crypto market, but Professor Tang Bo of the Financial Research Institute at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology offered a sharp perspective in an interview: ETFs lock funds into Bitcoin but do not bring corresponding liquidity, instead causing the market to lose its previous elasticity. Institutional funding is large in volume, and decision-making processes are lengthy; once a consensus expectation shifts, the stampede effect is more severe than in the retail era.

4. But That "Old Story" Isn't Over

If you only look at the first four sections, this is an obituary for Bitcoin.

● But another data point from February 10 turned the story around—the U.S. Bitcoin ETF recorded consecutive net inflows over two days, totaling over $600 million. The scale is not large enough to reverse the trend, but it ended a continuous net outflow cycle that had lasted a month since mid-January.

● What is more noteworthy is the divergence in holding structure. Checkonchain's data shows that since last October, the combined Bitcoin holdings of 11 U.S. Bitcoin ETFs have decreased from 1.37 million coins to 1.29 million coins, a decline of about 7%. Meanwhile, during the same period, Bitcoin's price fell from $126,000 to below $70,000, a decline of over 40%. The price drop is much greater than the reduction in holdings, which means that most institutional investors have not cut losses; they are merely enduring floating losses on paper.

● Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer of Bitwise, revealed an intuitive observation in an interview: “Those OGs who entered in 2017, 2013, or even earlier have not left the market. Some of them did cash out some profits—turning thousands into millions is normal—but the vast majority are still here and welcome institutions to take over.”

● An analyst from Bernstein Research used a nuanced phrase: “This is the weakest bear market argument in Bitcoin's history.” There were no exchange explosions, no liquidation black boxes, no regulatory iron curtains. There was just an asset, which had flown too high, returning to the ground after a macro liquidity retreat.

5. What Grayscale Really Wants to Say

Upon rereading this report, you will find that Grayscale is not defending Bitcoin's “safe-haven properties.” It is actually deconstructing an outdated metaphor.

● The “digital gold” narrative was born after the chaotic era of 2017. At that time, Bitcoin needed to explain itself to the outside world: it is not a tulip, not a Ponzi scheme, it is hard currency against the devaluation of fiat currency. Gold is the best analogy—limited supply, decentralized, not backed by any sovereign credit.

● But this analogy has been flawed from the start: gold has no technical risk, Bitcoin does; gold does not need to find product-market fit, Bitcoin does; gold will not fluctuate due to Ethereum upgrades or Solana outages, Bitcoin lives in a symbiotic relationship within the crypto ecosystem.

Grayscale's report provides real value by separating the dimensions of “long-term value storage” and “short-term price behavior.”

● Pandl acknowledged that in the short term, Bitcoin is indeed a risk asset; it will fall due to the Federal Reserve's hawkish statements, be sold off due to AI impacts on software stocks, and be pressured by ETF fund outflows. This is the price it must pay to integrate into the traditional financial system.

● But the long-term narrative does not need to be based on “rising every year.” Fixed supply, censorship resistance, global accessibility—these attributes do not disappear because of a price halving. They are simply waiting for the next awakened cycle.

6. Not Digital Gold, Not Tech Stocks

● On February 11, 2026, Bitcoin prices fluctuated narrowly around $67,000. This price is neither high nor low, but is situated in an awkward position—above is a stacked series of trapped positions and below is the collective cost line of institutional holdings. There is no direction, only waiting.

● According to Kaiko's data, the 30-day correlation of Bitcoin with the Nasdaq 100 index has risen to its highest level since March 2023, while its correlation with gold has approached zero. From a trader's perspective, it indeed resembles a shadow of the Nasdaq.

● But from a longer historical perspective, gold was not always gold. Before 1971, it was a benchmark for the U.S. dollar; after 1971, it became the “ultimate collateral without sovereign credit.” Bitcoin is undergoing a similar role transformation.

At the end of the Grayscale report, Pandl wrote a passage that got lost amidst all the technical analysis: “Bitcoin is neither completely like gold nor completely like tech stocks. It is becoming a new asset class—it is on the evolutionary path.”

This does not mean that “digital gold” is dead. It simply says: the most convenient and sellable metaphor about Bitcoin no longer matches the complex maturity it is undergoing.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。