Crypto has traded out of step with US Tech stocks for most of this year, and until July that was bad news.

The second quarter made the point painfully… The Nasdaq 100 returned 27.53% while the Nasdaq CME Crypto Index fell 15.46%, a 43-point gap in three months! Capital went where the story was, and the story was AI. Anyone holding crypto next to a technology sleeve got the decorrelation they were promised and none of the benefits.

July ran the same test with the signs reversed. The Nasdaq 100 fell 7.1% and closed the month at its low. The crypto index rose 11.4%. An 18-point gap, pointing the other way.

Chart 1 - Monthly Performance for Crypto and the Nasdaq 100   

^{Elaborated by Hashdex Asset Management with data from Nasdaq and Bloomberg from December 31, 2025 to July 30, 2026.}

 

One month is a small sample, but what interests me is the position the two markets are now standing in.

The Nasdaq 100 arrives here after one of the strongest quarters in its history, still up double digits on the year even after July's decline. Crypto arrives here 52% below its October 2025 high, with more than half of all bitcoin in existence held at a loss, the seventh time that's happened since 2011, and in each prior instance the reading came during the late stages of a drawdown rather than the early ones. One market has been rewarded for a single thesis for eighteen months. The other has been punished throughout. And 18 months of a single narrative have left portfolios more concentrated than most allocators intended.

 

Chart 2 -  Over Half of Bitcoin’s Supply in Loss is a Rare Historical Occurrence

^{Supply in loss measures the share of bitcoin whose most recent on-chain movement occurred at a price above the prevailing price. Dots mark the first date in each major drawdown cycle on which the measure reached 50%: September 28, 2011; September 15, 2015; November 14, 2018; March 12, 2020; September 6, 2022; and June 4, 2026. The measure has exceeded 50% on other dates within these cycles. The current drawdown has not recovered. Elaborated by Hashdex Asset Management with data from Messari, NewHedge and CryptoQuant, July 21, 2010 to June 30, 2026. Past performance does not guarantee future results.}

 

Meanwhile the AI trade has started showing wear. Intel grew revenue 25% last quarter, its fastest in almost fifteen years, and guided above consensus. The stock lost roughly a third of its value over July anyway, once investors weighed capital expenditure above $20 billion against a GAAP loss. The selling didn't hit large-cap technology broadly. It hit the companies whose earnings require the build-out to continue at its current pace… Memory, storage and semiconductors.

Crypto's fundamentals moved the opposite way over the same stretch. Ecosystem transactions reached all-time highs in the second quarter. Stablecoin settlement volume in the first half of 2026 already exceeded all of 2025. Tokenized real-world assets grew 43.9% over the semester. The SEC named digital assets the first regulatory objective in its draft strategic plan, and a bipartisan push is still trying to get the CLARITY Act passed this year. Usage and regulatory clarity are both at record levels while the index sits at less than half its October price. Our second-quarter Market Pulse works through the price-to-fundamentals calculation and where it breaks down.

 

Chart 3 - Stablecoin Transaction Volume in the First Half of 2026 Already Exceeded All of 2025

^{The 2026 figure reflects the six months ended June 30, 2026 and is not a full-year total. Volumes are unadjusted and include MEV bot activity and intra-exchange transfers. Volume traded is not indicative of price performance. Elaborated by Hashdex Asset Management with data from Artemis, January 1, 2021 to June 30, 2026.}

 

I don't know when that gap closes, and neither does anyone else. But an allocator looking at a portfolio concentrated in one narrative, and looking for something whose drivers sit outside that narrative, now has a candidate trading at cycle lows with improving fundamentals rather than one trading at highs on deteriorating ones. The asymmetry there is more interesting than it has been at any point this year.

Which brings me to how you'd own it, and this part matters more than the timing.

The most consequential developments in this asset class right now are in stablecoins, tokenization, and derivatives. None of them accrue to bitcoin directly. Bitcoin is a monetary asset, and it does that job well, but settlement infrastructure and tokenized collateral are being built somewhere else. And it's early enough that picking the winner is guesswork. The composition of this market is still evolving, which tells you something about how much confidence anyone should have in naming the eventual leader today.

A diversified index handles both problems. You get the asset class without underwriting a specific token, and you get the rebalancing that keeps your exposure current as the market reorganizes itself. That may sound boring next to picking winners, but at least you don't have to know which one wins to own the outcome.

 

— Samir Kerbage, Chief Investment Officer

 

 

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_{Effective January 20, 2026, the index changed its name from Nasdaq Crypto Index (NCI) to Nasdaq CME Crypto Index.}

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