Bitcoin’s sharp pullback from recent record highs has erased year-to-date gains, leading to questions about the cryptocurrency’s aggressive price targeting into 2026. But just as important as what happens next for Bitcoin’s price is the question of what role Bitcoin actually plays in a portfolio. When does it consistently behave like a store of value?
“We need to prove the value of digital stores over time,” Nate Geraci, president of Novadius Wealth Management, said on CNBC’s ETF Edge podcast.
For years, Bitcoin has been described as “digital gold,” a comparison that is both powerful and appealing to investors because gold moves uncorrelated with stocks and other risk assets and is expected to protect portfolios during times of broader market stress. But in the case of Bitcoin, the digital gold story is undermined every time it trades like a risky asset when stocks are down. After two different periods of volatility in 2025, Bitcoin failed to give a clear answer to the digital gold question.
“The track record so far has been mixed,” Geraci said.
He pointed to the period of the “tariff tantrum” when stocks sold off in April after President Trump announced widespread global tariffs, a time when Bitcoin was doing very well, but during a period of market volatility. “This caught the attention of a lot of investors,” he said.
But recently, the market has fallen due to a slump in tech stocks, and most cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, have been sold off. In particular, he pointed out that Bitcoin sold significantly better than the stock market.
“The jury is still out,” Geraci said.
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Bitcoin and Nasdaq 100 performance this year.
Geraci stressed that he believes that in the long term, Bitcoin is “on a path to functioning more like the physical metal itself.”
But for now, he added, it’s behaving more like an unstable “teenager.”
“It’s only been 15 to 16 years, so it needs to prove itself as a valuable digital store,” he said.
Gold, on the other hand, has a proven track record spanning thousands of years.
“This story is still in its early stages,” Geraci wrote in a follow-up email to CNBC.
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Year-to-date prices for Bitcoin and gold in 2025.
Geraci said it’s good to have some perspective during short-term volatility. Although Bitcoin is down more than 25% from its all-time high in October (the drop from all-time high to recent low was 35% more), its value has more than doubled since January 2024, when the Spot Bitcoin ETF entered the market following SEC approval.
Furthermore, while the Spot Bitcoin ETF has seen billions of dollars in outflows over the past month, it has attracted approximately $22 billion in inflows since the beginning of the year.
Although Bitcoin’s recent sell-off began as a result of a sell-off in tech stocks and a broader stock market decline, he ultimately believes that leverage in the crypto market played a large role in the long-term decline. “I think there was a lot of influence in this category that needed to be eliminated,” he said. “And I think that’s what we’re seeing now.”
Beyond Bitcoin itself, Djerassi believes that crypto index ETFs, portfolios that invest in a basket of digital assets rather than tracking the spot market for a single cryptocurrency, could be a way for more investors to seek diversification in new asset classes.
But he also believes Bitcoin will be an anomaly in the crypto market, predicting that many assets will continue to trade like tech stocks, and that investors should expect Bitcoin to fall in line with stock market drawdowns.
“Bitcoin aside, I view most other crypto tokens as risk assets, much closer to high-growth technology stocks than stores of value. Their investment case is tied to the future of stablecoins, tokenization, and decentralized finance,” Geraci wrote in an email.
