Barring a violent weekend, the Bitcoin bull market is still alive and well as the dollar continues to fall.

Bitcoin’s 2026 problem is the weekend

The reason I keep coming back to this opinion is because it feels brutally true in that only the market is true.

The only thing worse than buying Bitcoin this year was not buying Bitcoin. If you hold dollars, they are quietly taxed.

The dollar is depreciating, and the mood around “anti-dollar” assets is growing by the day.

If you owned a hard asset, you could get paid big and public for charts that made you want to text people screenshots at 2am.

Gold traded above $5,000 an ounce, silver rose into triple digits, and even the S&P 500 was up year over year.

Next, we turn our attention to Bitcoin, an asset that has built its personality around being an exit from fiat currencies.

The scoreboard shows he basically did nothing. So people stop, shrug their shoulders, and move on to the next transaction.

That’s wrong.

The real story behind this tape is even stranger and lies inside the watch.

The scoreboard for everyone to see

Here is a simple percentage of how 2026 has progressed so far, measured from the first available print since January 1st to January 27th 15:00 UTC.

If you’re reading this as a normal person, the point is obvious.

Metals won, oil did well, stocks did well, the dollar fell, and Bitcoin faltered.

The problem is that “stuck water” is a 24/7 illusion.

Bitcoin is always traded, but other Bitcoins are not

Bitcoin is traded every hour of every day. No closings, no weekend breaks, no mercy. People can buy it after dinner, on a flight, or on Sunday morning, when every news cycle is panicking everyone.

Most of the other lines in this chart live on a “nearly always” schedule. It’s definitely different from “usual”.

DXY futures are traded 21 hours a day. S&P Futures offers “nearly 24-hour” access on weekdays. CME calls it 24-hour liquidity, which is true in a way that every futures trader understands, and the important thing is that it’s open most of the time.

Cryptocurrencies, especially Spot Bitcoin, fall into the category of being traded 24/7. It continues even when others are supposed to be resting. That seems like an advantage.

On this dataset it behaved like cost.

“Fair” comparisons give Bitcoin a bad impression

When comparing assets, either compare assets with their own clocks or force them to use the same timestamp.

So I ran the data both ways.

The first pass, “as traded”, gives a flat Bitcoin result.

Second pass, duplicates only. We only check timestamps where all markets have prices.

That way the comparison will be done within the same amount of time. The overlap window starts at 00:00 UTC on January 2nd. The period ends at 15:00 UTC on January 27th.

In other words, the narrative that “Bitcoin was flat” is already more volatile than it appears.

And the biggest point hasn’t landed yet. Bitcoin’s pain this year has looked like an opportunity cost. That opportunity cost manifested itself at a very specific time.

Bitcoin’s entire 2026 spanned Saturday and Sunday

This is the cleanest of the datasets, and this is one detail I can’t overlook.

From January 1st to January 27th, Bitcoin’s compound returns were neatly divided into weekdays and weekends.

In other words, Bitcoin has acted like it wants to go up this past week. I then spent the weekend putting the work back together.

If you want to know which weekends the damage occurred, the dataset will tell you that too.

Although Bitcoin failed to rise, it was not in a vacuum. It was a performance that revealed who was controlling the tape when the adult market was off-hours.

This is how “digital gold” is expressed in ounces

People talk about Bitcoin as a hedge against the dollar, which is understandable since gains and losses are usually denominated in dollars.

However, the dollar can be the wrong measuring stick when hard asset trading is taking place.

Therefore, I tried to set the price of Bitcoin based on what was actually executed. Using overlap-only windows:

This is why I think my line “The only bad thing is…” hits home on an emotional level.

Bitcoin did not crash. If you’ve been trained to expect drama, it can feel like a victory. Your purchasing power is still lost. It bled against the very assets people buy when they’re worried about policy, money and geopolitics.

That fear is now pervasive throughout the mainstream press.

The Washington Post reported that the movement in gold and silver revolved around a move away from the dollar, central bank buying, and widespread safety measures. The Guardian described Gold’s $5,000 print as a flight to a safe haven.

The World Bank is clear about the relationship between uncertainty and money. With policy uncertainty and geopolitics at the center of the story, we expect precious metals prices to continue rising through 2026.

Bitcoin’s job description says you need to thrive in that environment. The data shows that something else is going on.

Bitcoin is trading like a stock beta, not a metal

Correlation is often abused. I’m not going to tell you that you’ll know what your assets “are” in a month.

Still, overlap-only hourly revenue shows a consistent picture.

So when people look back on this year and ask why Bitcoin couldn’t keep up with the rise in hard assets, the answer that fits the data is simple.

Bitcoin has spent this period behaving more like a risk asset than a safe asset. Tying it into the weekend pattern makes it even more important. Risk assets are where you go to raise cash when you feel anxious.

Cryptocurrencies have structural features that make it tempting to do so. That means being open. Even your average 24/7 trading explainer tends to arrive at the same idea.

The 24-hour market can be less liquid at odd times, which can make movements sharper.

The data shows a version of reality where the weekend has become a trap door.

Why this will be important in the future

If Bitcoin is going to “catch up” with the metal-led tape, it will probably need one thing more than anything else.

The leak will need to be stopped over the weekend. That’s a bold claim. It also provides a clear way to track your stories in real time.

If weekends in the coming weeks are flat or make a positive contribution, the pattern of “up on weekdays and down on weekends” will break.

Bitcoin has a chance to behave like a macro asset again. If this pattern continues, opportunity costs continue to accumulate.

Bitcoin’s claim to be the cleanest anti-fiat transaction continues to be challenged by the oldest anti-fiat transaction humanity has ever cultivated. You can also connect it to the story of institutional flows that are creeping into Bitcoin’s serious predictions.

Standard Chartered’s research team says the next leg will largely depend on demand for ETFs.

Their revised trajectory projects Bitcoin to be around $150,000 by the end of 2026, while removing incremental purchases by corporate treasuries from the model.

The key here is that weekends are the part where traditional rails are quiet and encrypted rails continue to operate.

If you want Bitcoin to trade like an adult hedge, you need an adult flow willing to hold the risk until the end of the week. Or it needs to be deep enough that weekend selling becomes inconsequential.

The market will tell you which one is better.

human version of this story

Most people do not experience “correlation.” They experience regret. They see gold popping, silver rising vertically, and Bitcoin sitting there as if waiting for an invitation. They suspect it was all a lie.

Then they zoomed in and noticed that Bitcoin had energy that week. The moment the calendar turned to Saturday, the energy disappeared. It’s relatable because it matches people’s real lives.

Monday is a resolution.

Friday is about confidence.

Saturday is doomscrolling.

Sunday is for negotiations.

Bitcoin has factored that emotional loop into its charts. The underlying data shows that this week the market acted as if it was trying to bring Bitcoin back into the macro conversation.

This weekend looked like a market using Bitcoin as a de-risking venue. Because Bitcoin was the only big liquid thing that was never shut down (even while some world leaders were still posting on social media).

That’s the real punch line.

Bitcoin’s 2026 will not be defined by one big crash or one spectacular breakout. It’s defined by leaks, and leaks have schedules.

What to watch next

For now, the most important lesson is one that seems all too basic.

Time is of the essence. Bitcoin trades in a world where the lights never go out.

This month it came with the bill.