Märkte Insight: Bitcoin schützt wie Gold vor einem Dollar-Crash? Von wegen

A historic intervention on the US bond market has recently brought Bitcoin back into the investor's line of sight. In mid-August, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced a doubling of purchases of long-held U.S. government bonds through the issuance of short-term securities, known as T-Bills. This move attracted investors to Bitcoin, alongside gold, the oldest cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin's price, which had been hovering between $60,000 and $65,000 for months, surged to as high as $80,000 in just a few days, a 25 percent increase. Many analysts attribute this price rise to what is being termed the "debasement trade," or the bet on a dollar value decline through a shift of assets from dollar securities to assets like gold or Bitcoin.

However, experts like top economist Robin Brooks warn that the hope of investors that Bitcoin can protect them similarly to gold in the event of a dollar decline may prove to be misleading. While Bitcoin is often called "digital gold," its supply and demand mechanism, in which new Bitcoins are created through a complex computational process called "mining", and the total number of Bitcoins is capped at around 21 million tokens, makes it different from gold.

Gold production is limited, with only a small amount added each year. In contrast, Bitcoin has seen a 29 percent decline over the same period. Brooks notes that Bitcoin is not part of the "debasement strategy". The lesson from Bitcoin's weak performance in this environment is that it is not a safe harbor or store of value like gold.

The problem with Bitcoin is that a large part of the investor base also invests in technology and AI stocks, which have delivered significantly higher returns in recent months. Additionally, cryptocurrencies are now much more intertwined with the traditional financial system, especially through stablecoins. Stablecoins are tokens on a blockchain that are exchangeable one-to-one with the dollar.

Companies like Tether and Circle are legally required to hold large amounts of government bonds. Stablecoins are also used as collateral for highly leveraged Bitcoin bets on cryptocurrency exchanges. This creates the risk of contagion effects: High market fluctuations could trigger the liquidation of collateral assets held in stablecoins, which in extreme cases could lead to rising returns on government bonds and further erosion of confidence in the dollar. Not a reassuring feature for an investor seeking a safe harbor.