According to VanEck’s April 2025 Digital Assets Monthly recap, Bitcoin (BTC) outperformed equities during a turbulent month, offering a glimpse of its potential as a macro hedge.

Yet, the asset’s quick return to correlated behavior suggests Bitcoin is not yet ready to stand fully apart from risk markets.

Bitcoin briefly broke free from traditional markets like stocks and equities. However, its newfound independence may have been short-lived.

“Bitcoin showed signs of decoupling from equities during the week ending April 6,” VanEck Head of Digital Assets Research Matthew Sigel wrote.

This period coincided with US President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping tariff measures, which triggered a global market selloff. While the S&P 500 and gold slumped, Bitcoin rose from $81,500 to over $84,500, signaling a possible shift in investor perception.

Still, the momentum did not last. As the month progressed, Bitcoin’s price action re-synced with equities. VanEck, using data from Artemis XYZ, noted that the 30-day BTC-S&P 500 correlation fell below 0.25 in early April but bounced back to 0.55 by month’s end.

“Bitcoin has not meaningfully decoupled,” the report emphasized.

Bitcoin gained 13% for the month, outshining the NASDAQ’s 1% loss and the S&P 500’s flat performance. Perhaps more intriguingly, Bitcoin’s volatility dropped by 4%, even as equity volatility doubled amid rising geopolitical tensions and trade uncertainty.

Yet while the short-term picture remains muddled, VanEck sees early signs of a structural shift. The report highlights a growing sovereign and institutional interest in Bitcoin as a store-of-value asset with long-term macro hedging potential.

“Structural tailwinds are forming. Bitcoin continues to find support as a sovereign, uncorrelated asset,” wrote Sigel.

VanEck pointed to Venezuela and Russia’s use of Bitcoin in international trade as an early signal of this transition.

Meanwhile, corporate BTC accumulation surged in April. Notable purchases included 25,400 BTC by Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) and fresh allocations by Metaplanet and Semler Scientific.

Softbank, Tether, and Cantor Fitzgerald also launched a new firm, 21 Capital, with plans to acquire $3 billion worth of Bitcoin.

These developments follow Standard Chartered’s assertion that Bitcoin is now growing into a hedge against traditional finance (TradFi) and US Treasury risk.

The bank argued that Bitcoin’s resilience amid monetary stress reflects its growing role as portfolio ballast against the fragility of fiat-denominated debt markets.

“I think Bitcoin is a hedge against both TradFi and US Treasury risks. The threat to remove US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell falls into Treasury risk—so the hedge is on,” Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered, told BeInCrypto.

However, this resilience did not extend to the broader crypto market. According to VanEck, altcoins stumbled as meme coins, speculative DeFi AI tokens, and Layer-1 networks like Ethereum and Sui fell sharply.

The MarketVector Smart Contract Leaders Index dropped 5% in April and is down 34% year-to-date. Solana stood out as a rare winner, gaining 16% thanks to network upgrades and increasing institutional treasury interest.

Sui posted a 45% jump in daily DEX volume and entered the top 10 in smart contract platform revenue. By contrast, Ethereum lagged, declining 3% as its fee revenue share shrank to just 14%, down from 74% two years ago.

The broader trend in altcoins was bearish, and speculative energy continued to fade. Trading volumes in meme coins dropped by 93% between January and March, with the MarketVector Meme Coin Index down 48% year-to-date.

Even so, regarding price and volatility metrics, Bitcoin’s relative strength in April could hint at where the asset is headed. VanEck’s report concludes that while Bitcoin has not yet fully broken from risk asset behavior, the groundwork for long-term decoupling is quietly being laid.

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