Bitcoin’s correlation with gold is at its highest in six years as investors increasingly look for ways to hedge against currency debasement.
That’s according to a new report from Bitwise, which this week pointed out that the precious metal and leading cryptocurrency are trading in lockstep because the U.S. government has “materially intervened in the macro picture.”
Bitcoin started surging last month, after the U.S. Treasury Department said it would more than double the size of its government debt repurchases. The coin had its best run in three years and third best August ever.
JUST IN: Bitcoin's correlation with gold hit a six-year high, according to Bitwise
“The last time the bitcoin-gold correlation was that high was in 2020, following the rounds of fiscal and monetary stimulus during the Covid crisis,” Bitwise’s European Head of Research, André Dragosch, wrote.
He added that bitcoin’s correlation with the stock market dropped to a one-year low, “implying some kind of decoupling between hard assets and the stock market.”
Bitcoin has been pushed as “digital gold” for years but has sometimes traded with tech stocks as a “risk-on” asset.
But the so-called debasement trade — when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value — was a much-talked about investment strategy last year and appears to be back.
The reason is down to the government intervening in markets, Dragosch argued. When the Treasury said it would try to rein in long-term borrowing costs, the dollar’s value slid and sent investors flooding back to gold — and bitcoin.
The Treasury the same week also said the U.S. public debt exceeded $40 trillion for the first time. Excessive debt also undermines confidence in the dollar.
“Investors are no longer asking whether to hedge currency debasement with gold or bitcoin. They’re simply hedging with both,” the report added.
“Bitcoin spent its first fifteen years being priced as a risk asset. If this correlation trend with gold holds, the next fifteen may look very different.”
The leading cryptocurrency again rallied this week, and was recently trading for close to $81,438 after jumping nearly 6% over a 24-hour period.
L-R: OnTrade co-founders Zachary Harl, chief investment officer; Raji Subramanian, CEO; and Matt Williams, president. (OnTrade Photos)
The co-founders of Pro.com, the Seattle-based home-improvement marketplace acquired by Opendoor in 2021, are back with a new company targeting what seems on the surface a very different kind of market: AI-powered software for the wealth management industry.
But Rajalakshmi “Raji” Subramanian and Matt Williams say the new challenge matches the same pattern: a huge industry held back not by a lack of customers, but by a shortage of professionals and tools.
Their Seattle startup, OnTrade, co-founded with former Bank of America chief investment officer Zachary Harl, has been operating under the radar since 2024, raising an undisclosed amount of funding from General Catalyst, Madrona and angel investors.
OnTrade’s chief technology officer is Jean Bredeche, who co-founded Quantopian, the algorithmic trading platform, and later served as a director of engineering at Robinhood.
How it works: OnTrade connects software that financial advisors already use — including CRM, portfolio accounting, trading, and compliance programs — into a single interface.
It then deploys AI agents to handle the type of work that advisors have traditionally done manually, such as scanning portfolios for tax-loss harvesting opportunities, flagging accounts that have drifted from their targets, or drafting proposals and reports for clients.
The humans approve everything before it reaches a client. The idea is to help them serve more clients without sacrificing the quality of their work, expanding access to wealth-management services that tend to be concentrated among more affluent households.
“Wealth management, if you look at the industry, does not have a demand problem; it has an access problem,” said Subramanian, the company’s CEO, in an interview. “Many people who’d like access to wealth management don’t have access to wealth management, and that’s what we’re here to solve.”
Harl, OnTrade’s chief investment officer, called raw foundation models the “brilliant PhDs” of the AI world — impressive on paper, but not as valuable to a specific industry such as wealth management until they understand its portfolios, policies, compliance rules, and client relationships. Vertical AI solutions like OnTrade, he said, are better positioned to connect that general-purpose intelligence to a specific firm’s data and workflows so the technology can do trusted work.
Industry shakeup: OnTrade is emerging at a pivotal moment, two days after investment giant Vanguard agreed to acquire wealth-management platform Altruist reportedly valued at $4 billion. OnTrade’s founders cite the deal as validation of the vertical AI opportunity they’re pursuing.
In a LinkedIn post Thursday, Subramanian wrote that the Vanguard-Altruist deal signals something bigger than a battle over where advisors park their clients’ assets: that capturing the opportunity “requires a new operating model rather than AI-enhanced versions of today’s applications.”
The wealth management industry’s unit of scale, she wrote, is shifting “from the number of people a firm employs to the intelligence and agency it can deploy.”
The founders: Subramanian joined Amazon in the late 1990s as an early engineer who helped build Amazon Marketplace and AWS, and later led the digitization of books for Kindle.
Amazon was where she met Williams, who had founded a startup called LiveBid that Amazon acquired in 1999. He spent 11 years there, including a stint as a technical advisor to Jeff Bezos, then left to run Digg as CEO and served as an entrepreneur in residence at Andreessen Horowitz.
Subramanian went on to run engineering at Yahoo Finance, where she helped open up market data that had previously been the province of institutional investors, giving her an early look at the problem that OnTrade is now aiming to solve.
In 2013, the two co-founded Pro.com, a tech-driven home improvement marketplace that raised early funding from investors including Madrona, Maveron, Bezos and Andreessen Horowitz.
Real estate tech company Opendoor acquired Pro.com in 2021, and brought both founders on as executives — Subramanian as chief technology officer, Williams as head of the Pro.com unit and senior vice president of retail.
Harl spent many years at Bank of America, rising to chief investment officer, where he managed the bank’s asset portfolios and large balance sheet risks across multiple market cycles. He is a chartered financial analyst (CFA), with a math and computer science degree from Indiana University, and a statistics degree from the London School of Economics.
He served on the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee under Secretaries Steven Mnuchin and Janet Yellen, advising on debt management, before joining Opendoor in 2023 as chief risk officer. That’s where he met Subramanian and Williams, before making the startup leap with them.
Traction and competition: The company’s technology is already in use at firms ranging in size from boutique advisories to large national practices, said Williams, the company’s president.
He said one client used the platform to win a billion-dollar family office account, and that another recouped the full annual cost of the platform in less than 30 days. He called that “a small window into what’s going to happen on a larger scale.”
The wealth management software market has many established players — such as Orion Advisor Solutions, Envestnet, and Addepar — but the OnTrade founders say they see them as partners, not rivals. OnTrade integrates with those systems rather than replacing them.
That distinguishes the company from Altruist, the Vanguard acquisition target, which built its own full stack, including its own custodian, the financial institution where client assets are held. That approach requires firms to move client assets onto its platform.
OnTrade doesn’t ask firms to replace their existing tools or move their clients’ money. Instead, it plugs into what’s already there.
The broader timing may work in their favor. As baby boomers age, an estimated $50 trillion or more in assets is expected to pass to younger generations in the coming decades — creating a wave of new clients who will need financial advisors, and new pressure on firms to serve them.
That’s where home improvement and wealth management have something in common.
“There aren’t many bigger places, other than health, wealth and real estate, where you can impact a population, especially an underserved population,” Williams said. “That was at the heart of the motivation.”
Bitcoin soared past $81,000 for the first time since January on Monday before dropping slightly. The recent moves have market observers asking if the debasement trade is back.
The biggest cryptocurrency was recently trading for $79,098 on Tuesday morning in New York after hitting $81,160 the evening before. Over a 24-hour period, the coin now sits unmoved. But zoom out seven days and it has jumped by 23%.
Bitcoin has benefited from news that the Treasury would at least double the size of its liquidity-support buyback operations. The announcement last week hurt the dollar but non-yielding assets have benefited.
This has some asking whether 2025’s much talked about debasement trade is back. The strategy — when investors buy an asset as a way to hedge against a currency losing value — has in the past benefited Bitcoin along with precious metals because such assets cannot be endlessly printed.
Analysts frequently touted the trade last year but following Bitcoin’s decline since October, it became less talked about as traders turned their attention to stocks related to artificial intelligence.
Though since the dollar has become increasingly weaker, Bitcoin could be attracting longer-term and “smart money” investors, market observers have said.
U.S. investors last week piled back into Bitcoin exchange-traded funds; the investment vehicles had their best week since October, with nearly $2 billion in inflows.
Bitcoin notched a new record of $126,080 in October before the biggest liquidation event in crypto history hurt its price. It continued to dip in 2026 on negative macroeconomic headwinds and fears that the Federal Reserve would not lower interest rates.
Still, it has become increasingly less volatile and so far has suffered from its shallowest bear market, according to analysts.
EXPERT INTERVIEW – With an interim agreement expected as early as today between the U.S. and Iran aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic, experts are assessing the short and long-term costs of any deal.
As negotiators work on an agreement to re-implement a ceasefire and restart negotiations aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there are questions about whether Iran will end up with more control over the strait than it enjoyed prior to the war and about the hidden costs that could include impacts on the sanctions packages that the U.S. has been using as a diplomacy tool to try and keep Iran’s malicious activities in check.
Cipher Brief Executive Editor Brad Christian spoke in-depth with former National Intelligence Manager for Iran at ODNI Norm Roule about the current “operational pause” and about the unseen costs of any deal. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the interview on The Cipher Brief’s YouTube Channel.
Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He also served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I)\n at ODNI, where he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran.
Christian:The situation with Iran has continued to progress in ways that maybe people didn't expect or anticipate when this war started. How do you describe where we are right now in terms of progress toward ending this war?
Roule: Where we are right now is in a lull. This is an operational pause. We're not approaching a significant core agreement. This is instead a period of coercive restraint. It's not a ceasefire. And Iran has continued to attack ships, but you're seeing the U.S. restrain its response again here to give diplomacy a chance. The president is showing considerable restraint. At the same time, the assets we have in the region are immensely powerful, immensely capable, and very well led. So, they have everything they need to do to undertake the dramatic operations the president has discussed. The diplomacy itself that's underway is a challenge. Each side is describing it dramatically differently.
If you look at the position of each side, there has been a consistent trend. The U.S. will announce negotiations, and the Iranians will deny negotiations are taking place. A few days later, there will be indirect negotiations through regional parties, still accomplishing the same things, but we're not at the table to talk about nuclear issues, missile issues, or militia issues as originally discussed.
The Iran-Oman mechanism that's being talked about right now in the press is likely being overstated by the Iranians and by some who would believe that concessions to Iran are the appropriate outcome from this crisis. Here's why it's being overstated: If tolls of any sort are charged, what happens to a shipper who refuses to pay? How does work in association with sanctions that have been imposed by the United States? Are American ships and American-related ships, allowed to pay Iran money? Through what mechanisms, what channels? Will we sanction other countries for paying Iran money through these channels? Iran has dictated which countries can enter the Persian Gulf and the bulk of this channel is through Iranian waters, but according to press reports, the Omanis must tell the Iranians who is transiting south. Iran's parliament has said no enemy countries can transit. Are Israeli or Israeli-related ships then banned from the Gulf? These are these are hugely consequential questions that are being glossed over by those who would say, ‘well, a deal is being worked out’. But this situation does show that while the U.S. absolutely has the military edge, it is restraining itself, and that has given Iran an ability to influence some would say, ‘control the pace’ of shipping in the Gulf. That shipping continues, and I've seen reports that as many as five million barrels of oil a day are now moving through the strait, which is going to reduce the pressure on oil markets, but this remains an unreliable waterway. Insurance rates remain very high and will remain high. And the blockade, of course, remains in place. This is a very delicate situation.
We also have to consider what happens if the Houthis look at the Iranian Oman deal and say, we want the same deal regarding the Bab el-Mandeb. What is the premise to refuse that? What would we do if the Houthis responded in their own way to attacking ships in the Red Sea?
So, we're in a very consequential period. And this is a period consequential for Iran because they're also in dire need of economic assistance. Their inflation is about 70%. Unemployment is horrific in many locations. I've seen figures as high as forty to forty-five percent in some areas. And the Iranians of course are showing defiance and claiming this isn't a problem, but this has got to be touching their decision making. And I think that's something the White House is considering.
Christian:President Trump has been very clear on where he stands on the issue of paying fees for passing through the Strait of Hormuz. Why is Iran pushing this issue when there were no fees in place before the war started? Is this one of Iran's most powerful points of leverage that they have over the strait? How are you thinking about their position on these fees?
Roule: It's a good question and I'm not putting a value judgment on it. I've tried to remain neutral on these issues. But those who advocate for making a deal with Iran, you know, diplomacy comes with severe consequences. If Iran is able to acquire control over the strait, will that collapse the international sanctions regime? For example, if Iran is able to control the strait in this regard, can it dictate which food shippers can come into Kuwait? If Iran controls the strait, it now has a permanent foot on the throat of the international community. And the idea that if we just do this, we can then build on trust with an IRGC government has no evidence in reality. Now that doesn't mean that it may not happen, but those who say you can build on this are not producing an argument that makes sense. Iran would be able to inject considerable power projection into the region in an unprecedented way, gaining billions of dollars, and that money would inevitably go to its missile program and proxies. And those who talk diplomacy with Iran, and you can see this when you look at social media statements or foreign affairs articles. The authors who speak most passionately and eloquently about engagement with Iran can't seem to acknowledge that people will die as a consequence. Now, that makes me sound like I'm opposed to this but I'm just giving you all the reasons why this is a problem.
The region, of course, has no desire for Iran to have this capability. But they also have no desire for a missile and drone war. That you either have a drone war, missile war, or give in to Iran, those are usually statements made by people who aren't professional diplomats, professional policymakers or have little understanding of the regional issues. There's going to be some sort of path in the middle that works if we're to protect and preserve sanctions as our tool against Iran's terrorism and other activities and if we’re to protect and preserve the national sovereignty and security of these countries who are our partners.
Also in the details of this deal are questions over whether the U.S. military would be banned from the Persian Gulf. The Iranians would have to approve the passage of U.S. military ships, which of course we wouldn't agree to, but the Iranians could claim that as a violation and things could unravel. We're going to land in a gray area on this if diplomacy is to succeed and it may not succeed.
Christian: In public statements, President Trump seems to be losing patience with the process. The president has said before that if Iran doesn't make this deal, that's it and we've witnessed similar red line crescendo moments before. You mentioned the IRGC led government. It's clear that they are running the country now. It's not clear how the diplomatic process is working, certainly by historical standards. What are your potential measures of success or indicators that the diplomatic process has run its course and what are you watching as potential next steps?
Roule: Throughout the last twenty years, various administrations, Democratic and Republican, have each said the same thing that we will try every possible diplomatic option for as long as possible and that all responses remain on the table. But once we've shown the world that we have tried every diplomatic option and the Iranians won't take yes for an answer, won't take diplomacy for an answer, then we'll be justified in using force.
I've been in congressional testimony where I've had Republicans and Democratic State Department officials insist that was U.S. policy. And that is congruent with the President's statements. He's basically saying, ‘Look, I'm going to give them every opportunity to negotiate’ because the consequences of a much broader conflict for the region, for the Iranian people, for civilians, for the U.S. war fighters who are risking their lives in the region, all of this will come into play.
We do have the assets in the region and our leadership in the military force there is exceptional and highly experienced. And based on the nature of the attacks conducted by the U.S. military in recent weeks, one can deduce a couple of points.
The first is that we know a lot about Iran's military architecture. And second, Iran has very little defense against our attacks because we've seen very little air defense or port defense as a result. Iran only has an offensive capacity. And it's attacking civilian architecture as well as U.S. military bases, not being used by the U.S. military, but nonetheless, they're bases where we have that presence. But at some point, if you believe in international values, we we've got to stand with our partners to protect them in a way that is congruent with their national interest and leadership approaches.
Christian: Over the weekend, news reports indicated that the Gulf states were the ones that convinced President Trump to not escalate this war right now. Do you have a sense of where the Gulf states are right now in terms of their approach to President Trump, their approach to Iran?
Roule: I think you need to have several different pillars in mind. First, let's talk about what the Gulf States have done that has been quite successful. Their defense against Iran has been very, very successful as a result of years of engagement with the United States and with the U.S. private sector, which is playing a large role in their successes and will play a role in their future successes in terms of defending against cyberattacks and drone and missile attacks. No air defense is perfect, but the performance by the GCC has been exceptional. And they have protected three things that we should applaud.
First, they've protected their own nationals and their own infrastructure, which is the duty of every state. They're protecting millions of other citizens to include hundreds of thousands of Americans who live in the region. They're keeping American lives safe with their air defense. And last, they've protected the international economy, preserving through their energy flows and their handling of the situation, the ability to maintain stable energy prices and distillate impact on subsidiary industries. All of that is exceptional.
At the same time, we've seen the Saudi military crisply respond to Houthi aggression with surgical strikes, and the Saudi military joining with the United States on strikes on Iraq, which is a first. And it's also a demonstration of the quality of Saudi Air Forces in general. So, there's a sense of extremely close partnership between our militaries. But how they move forward, you know, it is their neighborhood, so how they move forward in a world where there could be a major attack on Iran is likely going to mean that they're going to face more missile and drone attacks. They're going to want a voice in this.
They know their region better than we do. We should respect that. And I think that's what you saw last week in the reports of phone calls to the president, where he gave diplomacy a chance and was about to move, and I believe he was serious, based on my understanding. But he also took into consideration partners, people who have lives on the line and are trying to defend the world's economy and know their neighborhood very well. So, I'm not unhappy with what's happened. I don't think you can criticize that. That's a natural, organic and appropriate process.
Christian: Let's talk gray zone just for a moment. We've seen reports recently that the hacks against the water infrastructure in Minnesota could have involved Iran. We've seen reports that China, although not confirmed, was planning to deliver air defense systems to Iran. There's no doubt about the cooperation continuing between Russia and Iran. What are you looking at that some of us may be missing?
Roule: Press reports confirm what many observers have cited, and that is that Iran's cyber activities have continued unabated since this conflict began. Indeed, before the conflict, against multiple actors in the United States and largely that's been successfully defended against by our national cyber architecture, as well as the architecture of our Gulf partners. The president has disagreed with the assessment on Minnesota and other places, but that does fit with the past pattern of Iranian cyber activity against SCADA and other systems in the United States. and has been a longtime target of Iran itself. It is an attack on our national infrastructure, if it's proven. And if proven and we don't respond to it, the people in Tehran are going to say, ‘Well, there's no reason we shouldn't continue to do this’. So, I think that issue itself is pushing the White House towards alternative actions besides diplomacy. And in fairness, it has been a traditional standpoint of multiple administrations to say how we respond. Is it at a time and way of our choosing? We don't respond symmetrically, you know, we don't do the exact same thing back. So, if the United States were to respond with airstrikes against Iran’s cyber architecture, which would probably be a good thing in a conflict, that is an appropriate proportional response just done differently. And it would be congruent with multiple administrations' views and statements as to how they will treat Iranian aggression.
Christian: What are you looking for next? What are you paying the most attention to?
Roule: As I mentioned, if you give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz, you're going to have consequences, not only in terms of whether they will ever negotiate seriously with us, but what does it mean for the Red Sea, and all sorts of other things? And those who say, well, we can work past that usually aren't in the Gulf, usually don't have children fighting right now and usually won't pay the price of those decisions. Not to say they won't be made, but we need to be upfront on those costs, and some of the issues aren't being discussed.
What I'm looking for is the conversation about those costs. And if it doesn't happen, that's a bad thing for everybody. The other issue is I think we need to look at is how the U.S. is going to respond to continued Iranian aggression. When does the U.S. restrain itself? Right now, the president is clearly, as he's announced, looking at de-escalation. But if the Iranians continue to probe with cyberattacks and missile and drone strikes, they've got to be addressed in a way that says to Iran, that there is a material price to be paid for that.
In the negotiating channels, I would look for any evidence that the U.S. is now directly dealing with the Iranians. That's unlikely to happen in the near term. That doesn't mean that diplomacy isn't occurring robustly through our partners, but any evidence of direct negotiations with the U.S. would be a very significant uptick.
And last, I would look for someone to address the issue of how any payments to Iran, involuntarily or otherwise, will impact the sanctions regime. Failure to address that is irresponsible in a policy world and indicates that maybe that's not being taken seriously.
And maybe one more point, and that is we should expect rhetoric on each side, but we should focus on what happens on the ground via the effervescent statements that are so often in the media.
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