Bitcoin’s Q3 Lag Behind Equities, Metals, and USD Reveals Critical Level for Next Major Move

Digital gold stumbles while traditional assets sprint ahead—here's the make-or-break price zone every trader's watching.

The Underperformance Puzzle

Bitcoin trails equities, precious metals, and the US dollar in Q3 performance metrics. The divergence highlights crypto's unique volatility profile amid macroeconomic crosscurrents.

Key Technical Threshold Emerges

Analysts identify a critical support level that could determine Bitcoin's next directional burst. Break this barrier and bulls regain control—fail and bears might hibernate through quarter-end.

Market Psychology at Play

Traders weigh Bitcoin's store-of-value narrative against its risk-on characteristics. The asset dances between inflation hedge and tech stock proxy while Wall Street fund managers adjust their spreadsheets for the tenth time this week.

The consolidation pattern suggests either explosive momentum or painful correction ahead. Forget the fundamentals—sometimes price action just needs a good old-fashioned technical shove.

Zooming out, it is important to assess whether Bitcoin remains in an uptrend characterized by higher highs and higher lows to get an idea of whether the rally is sustainable.

Analyst Caleb Franzen highlights that bitcoin has slipped below its 100-day exponential moving average (EMA), with the 200-day EMA sitting at $106,186. The previous significant low was around $107,252 on Sept. 1, and for the broader trend to remain intact, bitcoin will need to hold above that level.,

Macro Backdrop

The U.S. economy grew at an annualized pace of 3.8% in the second quarter, well above the 3.3% estimate and the strongest performance since the second quarter of 2023. Initial jobless claims dropped by 14,000 to 218,000, coming in below expectations and marking the lowest level since mid-July. While spending data came in line with the market's expectation. The US Core PCE price index, the Federal Reserve's preferred measure of underlying inflation that excludes food and energy, rose 0.2% in August 2025 from the prior month.

The yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries bounced off the 4% support, and is now trading NEAR 4.2%. The dollar index (DXY) continues to hover around long-term support at 98. Meanwhile, metals are leading the action, with silver at around $45 approaching an all-time high at levels last seen in 1980 and 2011. U.S. equities, in the meantime, are just shy of their records.

Bitcoin remains the outlier at more than 10% below its peak.

Bitcoin-Exposed Equities

Bitcoin treasury companies continue to face severe multiple-to-net-asset-value (mNAV) compression. Strategy (MSTR) is barely positive year-to-date. At one point, it dipped below $300, a negative return for 2025.

The ratio between Strategy and BlackRock iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) stands at 4.8, the lowest since October 2024, which shows just how much the largest bitcoin treasury company has underperformed bitcoin over the past 12 months.

Strategy’s enterprise mNAV is currently 1.44 (as of Friday). Enterprise value here accounts for all basic shares outstanding, total notional debt and total notional value of perpetual preferred stock minus the company’s cash balance.

The silver lining for MSTR is that three of the four perpetual preferred stocks, STRK, STRC and STRF, are all sporting positive lifetime returns as Executive Chairman Michael Saylor looks to buy more BTC through these vehicles.

A growing issue for MSTR is the lack of volatility in bitcoin. The cryptocurrency's Implied volatility — a measure of the market’s expectation of future price fluctuations — has dropped below 40, the lowest in years.

This matters because Saylor has often framed MSTR as a volatility play on bitcoin. For comparison, MSTR’s implied volatility is at 68. Its annualized standard deviation of daily log returns over the past year was 89%, while over the last 30 days it has fallen to 49%.

For equities, higher volatility often attracts speculators, generates trading opportunities and draws investor attention, so the decline is likely acting as a headwind.

Meantime, the fifth-largest bitcoin treasury company, Metaplanet (3350), holds 25,555 BTC and still has roughly $500 million left to deploy from its international offering. Despite this, its share price continues to struggle at 517 yen ($3.45), more than 70% below its all-time high.

Metaplanet’s mNAV has dropped to 1.12, down sharply from 8.44 in June. Its market capitalization now stands at $3.94 billion compared to a bitcoin NAV of $2.9 billion, with an average BTC acquisition cost of $106,065.