Bitcoin Keeps Winning While Everyone Else Panics: Study

While the rest of the world hits the panic button, Bitcoin apparently decides it's party time. The orange coin tends to outperform traditional safe haven assets like gold in the two months following major global crises, according to new analysis from Brazilian crypto exchange Mercado Bitcoin. Because nothing says "safe haven" quite like an asset that once crashed 90% three separate times but keeps coming back like a cockroach in a nuclear winter.

The study, led by Rony Szuster, head of research at the Latin American crypto platform, examined 60-day windows after economic or geopolitical shocks such as the COVID-19 outbreak and U.S. tariff escalations. Bitcoin posted stronger returns than both gold and the S&P 500 in each of the periods analyzed. Szuster and team basically zoomed in on history's greatest FOMO moments and asked: "But what if we just held?"

In April last year, after the Trump administration announced sweeping tariffs, the price of bitcoin jumped 24% over the following 60 days. Gold rose 8%, and the S&P 500 gained 4%, the firm found. Meanwhile, traders who panic-sold their BTC at the bottom were probably staring at their screens wondering why their portfolio looked like a sad salad while Bitcoin kept doing that thing where it pretends to die and then doesn't.

A similar pattern emerged at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, when BTC rose 21%, while the other assets trailed. Yes, that's right—when the world was literally shutting down and toilet paper became more valuable than stocks, Bitcoin decided to go on a joyride. Classic Bitcoin.

Szuster cautioned that judging bitcoin's performance too soon after a crisis can be misleading. "It's like watching the first few minutes of a movie and thinking you already know how it ends," he said. "In moments like this, investors sell positions to reduce risk or raise cash, and even defensive assets can fall." Basically, don't be the guy who sells during the opening scene and then posts on Twitter about how the whole movie sucked.

That happens as investors scramble for liquidity, yet bitcoin has consistently bounced back, the firm found.