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In recent days, Bitcoin has shown positive momentum, outperforming the stock market in percentage growth. However, the analytical platform Glassnode noted that this is becoming an increasingly rare occurrence — over the past three months, $BTC has only outperformed the key US index S&P 500 on one-third of trading days. And this is the longest period in the last six years that Bitcoin has lagged behind the US stock market, stated Glassnode. According to data tracked by the platform, the share of Bitcoin's successful days relative to the S&P 500 has dropped to 37.8%.
The deteriorating trend is clearly visible on the chart. In 2023 and early 2024, the share of trading sessions where Bitcoin outperformed the S&P 500 was 50–60%. However, already in 2025, the indicator increasingly fell below 50%, and by 2026 it reached the current 37.8%.
"The question now is whether this is the beginning of a trend," write the experts.
Regarding asset growth not in individual trading sessions but over the period from the beginning of the year to August 18, Bitcoin's price also looks worse compared to traditional assets. The price of $BTC during this period has plummeted by almost 27%, while the S&P 500 and NASDAQ have grown by 14% and 19% respectively, and the price of gold — by almost 2%, although Bitcoin's momentum has often correlated with the prices of all these assets in the past.
It is also noteworthy that the current levels mentioned by Glassnode are comparable to the early months of 2022, just before the start of a prolonged bear market. That period was accompanied by the collapse of one of the largest crypto exchanges at the time, FTX, and the bankruptcy of dozens of other major crypto companies.
Although the bear market of 2026, as of August, has not been marked by stress on the scale of the FTX collapse, experts call the current period one of the toughest in the history of the crypto market.
More than five crypto exchanges and a hundred other crypto companies have closed, and Bitcoin miners are massively transitioning to servicing artificial intelligence needs. Retail cryptocurrency traders and even the crypto exchanges themselves have shifted their focus to trading stocks of traditional companies, something difficult to imagine in previous cycles.
At the same time, the current cycle since 2024 is considered one of the most positive in terms of institutional adoption and regulation of cryptocurrencies, thanks to the approval of Bitcoin-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in early 2024 and the arrival of a new US presidential administration in early 2025.
Bitcoin's Long-Term Prospects
However, if we take the percentage growth of Bitcoin since 2021, as presented in the Glassnode analysis, then $BTC is not very different from traditional assets. For example, gold and NASDAQ have gained over 130%, while the S&P 500 has grown by approximately 105%. Over the same period, the Bitcoin price has increased by about 120%.
After 2021, Bitcoin was unable to exceed the growth rates of traditional assets, although before that it grew at much faster rates. For instance, growth was over 300% in 2020 and over 1300% in 2017.
Glassnode analysts drew attention to this: experts pointed out that "Bitcoin demonstrates better performance in terms of growth rates, but this excess return gradually decreases over the years."
