With a few hours left, Bitcoin is on track to post its worst losing streak since 2018, with February marking a fifth straight monthly decline.
The run of losses would be the longest since this 2018-2019 bear market and follows what has already been bitcoin’s worst first 50-day start to a year on record, leaving BTC up more than 25% year-to-date and heading for its first ever back-to-back January and February declines.
More? The Bitcoin-to-Gold ratio fell to 12.288 ounces in February, marking a 70% decline over the past 14 months.
Bitcoin is also closing in on its worst month since June 2022, when the collapse of Terra-Luna that year sent its price down by about a third. With bitcoin currently at around $66,000, the February drop is more than 16%.
But some analysts argue that comparing the current stretch to 2018 may be oversimplifying what’s unfolding.
Repricing within a structural regime change
“What we’re seeing is not just weakness. It’s repricing within a structural regime change,” Mati Greenspan, senior eToro market analyst and founder of Quantum Economics, told CoinDesk.
He believes that while tariffs, ETF flows and macro fears may explain the timing of the sell-off, they do not explain the deeper move, which he sees as a broader recalibration of how markets value risk assets in an era of high uncertainty.
Bitcoin is also nearing a fifth straight weekly decline, a streak last seen between March and May 2022.
Geopolitical tensions have strengthened the US dollar and crude oil prices, tightened financial conditions and weighed on risk assets.
Yet this downturn stands out for another reason: bitcoin’s uneven relationship with stocks. While US stocks have remained relatively resilient, BTC has significantly underperformed, marking an unusual period of volatility in its traditional risk-asset correlation.
Confrontational arguments
“Bitcoin doesn’t have a narrative right now, and it’s being pushed from both sides,” Jonatan Randin, senior market analyst at PrimeXBT, said in an email to CoinDesk.
Randin pointed to mounting macro pressures, including $3.8 billion in ETF outflows over the past five weeks, escalating tariff tensions and a Federal Reserve that has yet to signal imminent rate cuts.
While gold has attracted safe-haven flows and stocks have ridden AI momentum, bitcoin has lagged. “Gold is up about 48% since September, while bitcoin is down about 41% over the same period,” Randin said, explaining that the divergence shows investors still treat BTC as a liquidity-sensitive risk asset rather than digital gold.
The correlation picture has been unstable. “The 20-day BTC-Nasdaq correlation fluctuated from -0.68 to +0.72 between early and mid-February. That’s not decorrelation, that’s volatility,” Randin said. “When the risk trade works and an asset is left behind, it is usually weakness, not strength.”
The narrative “hasn’t changed since 2009. It’s a global, neutral alternative to debt-based fiat systems,” according to Greenspan.
Decor relations are not random
“When correlations break down during regime shifts, it’s usually not random. It’s early repricing,” Greenspan said. “If stocks are still treated as cyclical growth exposure while bitcoin starts trading more like a sovereign hedge, that divergence is structurally bullish.”
Despite the scale of the downgrade, Randin cautioned against assuming the correction is over.
“Bitcoin is now down 52% from October highs,” he said. “That sounds like a lot, but when you look at previous bear markets where we’ve seen drawdowns of 80% or more, realistically we could only be halfway through this correction.”
He added that while the weekly relative strength index (RSI) has fallen to its lowest reading in bitcoin history, and accumulator addresses have absorbed around 372,000 BTC since the end of December, signals often associated with cycle bottoms, similar conditions in previous downturns were followed by a further decline of 30% to 40% before a final low was formed.
However, Greenspan said the sentiment may already reflect much of the pessimism. “When sentiment turns so uniformly negative while long-term fundamentals remain intact, reversals tend to be sharp,” he said.
Until bitcoin can regain the $68,000-$72,000 zone, Randin said, “I would expect this streak to continue rather than break cleanly.” He identified $60,000 as an important near-term support level, with the 200-week moving average near $58,500 just below it.
“The losing streak narrative focuses on five months,” Greenspan added. “The structural history spans decades.”
