Bitcoin hasn’t been acting as an inflation hedge over the last few months, according to analysts with Bank of America who noted the flagship cryptocurrency has instead been trading as a risk asset since July 2021.
According to Fortune, Bank of America analysts Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss have drafted a new report where they point to data showing BTC often moves along with the stock market, instead of acting as a hedge against inflation.
The report details that on January 21, the correlation between Bitcoin and the market’s flagship index, the S&P 500, hit an all-time high based on their movement over the previous 180 days. Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq 100 index was also near all-time highs.
Both equities and cryptoassets have been enduring a significant sell-off so far this year. After the Federal Reserve indicated it was set to raise interest rates by 50 basis points last week, BTC’s value plummeted alongside that of stocks in a sell-off that hasn’t slowed down just yet.
Bank of America’s analysts expect the correlation between BTC and equities to remain in the near future. Moreover, while bitcoin has often been compared to gold, the correlation between the flagship cryptocurrency and the precious metal has dropped to near zero since June 2021, and has kept trending down.
As CryptoGlobe reported, earlier this year Bank of America’s analysts wrote that Solana ($SOL) has the potential to “become the Visa” of the cryptocurrency space as it focuses on scalability, low transaction fees, and ease of use.
In a report, they pointed out that Solana has settled over 50 billion transactions since it was first launched in 2020, while Visa processed 164.7 billion transactions in the year ended September 30. They noted Solana could soon take a share of Ethereum’s market share over its low transaction fees and focus on scalability, pointing out Ethereum “prioritizes decentralization and security, but at the expense of scalability, which has led to periods of network congestion.”
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