Bitcoin's Stock Decoupling Mirrors 2015, Woo Says

Bitcoin's relationship with stocks just hit its widest split in nearly a decade, and analyst Willy Woo says it looks a lot like 2015, the setup before the 2017 bull market. Woo posted a long-term chart of bitcoin against the S&P 500 on Sept. 6.

His read: the two assets have drifted apart to a degree they haven't in about ten years. "It's almost been a decade since the last time this happened," he wrote on X. "The last time BTC decoupled from stocks to this degree was 2015 (prelude to the 2017 bull market)."

The 2015 comparison, unpacked

Woo's argument runs on a timeline. He calls 2014 a stretch when stocks stayed bullish while bitcoin ground through an uncorrelated bear market of its own. Then came 2015 and 2016, a phase where the assets traded nearly opposite.

Bitcoin flipped into what Woo calls "bull mode." Equities chopped sideways and weak. Only in 2017 did both finally move together, on the way up. "I MO the setup looks similar," Woo said.

"BTC liquidity continues to strengthen, while equities starting to show signs of fragility." Woo's chart pairs bitcoin, the S&P 500, and a correlation series that reaches back to 2010. He credits Glassnode as the data source. There is a structural reason bitcoin can wander off on its own.

It trades continuously around the clock, needs no quarterly earnings report, and issues new coins on a fixed schedule. About 21 million BTC will ever exist. The S&P 500, by contrast, is a bundle of companies hostage to profit, interest rates, and expectations.

The call drew immediate resistance from Darkfost, a contributor at CryptoQuant. He posted his own chart running from January 2020 through July 2026, tracking bitcoin, the S&P 500, and their correlation coefficient. His latest reading sat in positive territory, not the deep separation Woo described.

"I don't know how it's computed, but I don't see this right now," Darkfost wrote. "I think you used a high TF average but even this way it's hard to imagine, because there hasn't been a strong decoupling period in a while." The disagreement comes down to measurement.

Correlation tracks how closely two assets move together, but the answer shifts with the window you pick, the data frequency, and how you treat days when stocks shut and bitcoin keeps trading. The S&P 500 rests on weekends and holidays. Bitcoin does not.

Woo's image lists Glassnode as its provider but shows none of those settings. Darkfost's counterchart shows the correlation swinging between positive and negative, never settling into a long separation. Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Mike McGlone underlined the point in April.

He cited a 200-day bitcoin-equity correlation near 0.5, a moderate positive link over that longer stretch. A long horizon folds in months of earlier co-movement that a short one leaves out, which is why the two analysts can look at the same general question and reach different answers.

Where the market actually sits

The debate is not purely academic. Broader data gives Woo's fragility warning some cover, even if they stop short of proving the 2015 script will repeat. Grayscale recently flagged record U.S. household stock exposure and high valuations as concentration risk, arguing that crowded portfolios get more fragile when equities reverse.

Other measures show bitcoin shifting its allegiances. Bitwise data put bitcoin's 90-day correlation with gold above 0.5, while Glassnode data showed bitcoin's 30-day correlation with the S&P 500 sliding toward zero during the August rally. Bitcoin looking more like gold than tech is a quieter version of the same decoupling story.

None of this settles whether Woo or Darkfost is right. The honest answer is that the chart itself depends on the ruler you use. What would settle it is a real test: whether bitcoin holds its independence if stocks actually break down.

The 200-day correlation McGlone cited, sitting near 0.5 through April, is one number to watch as that unfolds.