When markets wanted growth, money chased tech, but when they wanted safety, it moved to cash and Treasuries.
According to analyst Shanaka Anslem Perera, the story everyone has been telling about Bitcoin (BTC) this year, that big money fled to gold and left crypto behind, is wrong.
He laid out the actual flow of data in a post on X, showing how the picture is considerably different from what the rotation narrative suggests.
ETF Flows Tell a Different Story
The analyst argued that, based on spot Bitcoin ETF data, investors have not abandoned the flagship cryptocurrency. Since their launch in January 2024, they have attracted more than $53 billion in net inflows, something that took gold ETFs some five years to achieve.
Things changed during the recent market correction, when about $4.4 billion flowed out in 13 consecutive trading sessions. But Perera pointed out that the money left Bitcoin to chase highs in AI and semiconductors, describing investors who made the shift as tourists who react to every changing narrative.
Per his analysis, BTC has found itself caught between two competing trades.
“When the market wanted offense, the money left Bitcoin to chase AI and chip stocks at fresh highs,” he wrote. “When the market wanted defense, the money left Bitcoin for Treasuries and cash.”
He also claimed that the gold side of the story had a similar hole in it. Indeed, big gold ETFs bled this year, but, according to Perera, the money didn’t go to BTC as some headlines had suggested, but it went into cheaper gold products, essentially meaning it was a “fee swap” and not a defection to Bitcoin.
There was a similar misread inside crypto, as XRP and Solana funds pulled money while BTC bled. Many market watchers thought it was a changing of the guard, but Perera pointed out that since those funds sit on bases 40 to 50 times smaller than Bitcoin’s, relatively modest inflows may look dramatic on a chart while having very little meaning at scale.
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Debate Over Safe Haven Continues
What makes Perera’s analysis worthwhile is how it makes a distinction between what he called Bitcoin’s two shareholder bases: short-term ETF investors that react quickly and emotionally to economic data and market sentiment, and long-term holders who continue accumulating during periods of weakness.
According to the analyst, when most headlines about ETFs focused on outflows, the long-term holders added about 125,000 BTC to their holdings, basically buying the coins that the ETF crowd was panic-selling on every CPI print.
The debate around Bitcoin’s role has become quite loud this year, with billionaire Ray Dalio saying in March that gold and BTC cannot be compared, as institutions still prefer the metal as a store of value.
Other research also cast doubt on the rotation narrative, with analyst Charlie Bilello finding that both gold and Bitcoin were trading below their long-term trend levels at the same time, suggesting parallel weakness rather than capital moving directly from one to the other.
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