"What Kind of Asset Is Bitcoin?" assesses relationships between of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) as a proxy for bitcoin holdings and each of 35 exchange-traded products based on daily and monthly return correlations. How are such relationships evolving? To investigate, we calculate daily and monthly return correlations between bitcoin and each of the following funds since inception of iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT):
- IBIT
- iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA)
- SPDR Gold Shares (GLD)
- Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ)
- Invesco Global Listed Private Equity ETF (PSP)
- iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT)
- Invesco DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund (UUP)
For days on which bitcoin trades but exchanges are closed, we ignore bitcoin prices. Using daily and monthly bitcoin prices and dividend-adjusted prices for the selected funds from mid-January 2024 (late July 2024 for ETHA) through late April 2025, we find that:
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