In its early days, bitcoin gained the status of “digital gold” which is widely recognized as a store of value and a hedge against inflation. Yet, some experts point out that bitcoin has been lately following the sentiment in the stock market rather than gold. In 2021, the macroeconomic background largely shaped the trajectory of the coin. Its price was especially influenced by the news about the Fed’s policy, coronavirus spread, and inflation expectations. Last year, correlation between BTC and the S&P 500 or the NASDAQ Composite was much higher than between bitcoin and gold. In fact, the two assets had a negative correlation in different periods of the year. This confirms the view that bitcoin has been trading in tandem with stocks in the past few months as “investors adjust to the Federal Reserve’s plans to tighten financial conditions for the first time in nearly two years,” MarketWatch reports. As evidence of that trend, the 100-day correlation between bitcoin and stocks represented by the S&P 500 index reached almost 0.49, the highest coefficient since July 2020, according to Dow Jones Market data.