Bitcoin has been referred to as "digital gold" almost since its inception. According to many people, bitcoin can serve as a store of value just like gold. That is why it has been said from the beginning that there will be a positive correlation between bitcoin and gold prices. Many people in the sector have believed this in the long run, but recent research shows something else.

A group of researchers decided to find out whether there is indeed a positive correlation between Bitcoin and gold and, if so, to what extent. CoinMetrics data, as well as a 90-day Spearman rank correlation (a tool commonly used to find out correlations), was used to investigate the correlation between the price of Bitcoin and gold (using data since 2013). The Spearman rank determines what the correlation is: 1 (perfect positive correlation), 0 (no correlation) or -1 (perfect negative / inverse correlation). However, the results surprised many traders and analysts from the cryptocurrency sector. The correlation between bitcoin and gold is about 0.2, indicating little to no correlation. This means that even if these two assets were matching in the past, it is only a coincidence. There is one perfect example to explain the above: in the recent case, the price of gold and bitcoin skyrocketed. The reason for this was the dispute between Iran and the US, and both assets, bitcoin and gold, ought to serve as a store of value in times of unrest and uncertainty. However, as the Spearman rank correlation shows, there was no significant positive correlation found between bitcoin and gold in the period from 2013 to 2020.