Bitcoin fell on 92% of stocks’ worst days since 2022: Sentora - Crypto News

Bitcoin has fallen on 92% of the U.S. stock market's worst days since 2022, according to Sentora research that has challenged the case for treating crypto as protection against equity selloffs. Ether performed even worse, declining on 95% of those same sessions.

The findings come after the Nov. 5 market selloff, when the S&P 500 lost 4.4% and the Nasdaq-100 fell 6.4%, while Bitcoin dropped 5% and Ether declined 7.2%. Sentora's research compared cryptocurrency returns with U.S. stock indices from May 2018 through November 2026.

Crypto-stock link strengthens during selloffs

Across the full sample, Sentora identified 107 sessions in the S&P 500's worst-performing 5%, each involving a loss of at least 1.74%. Bitcoin fell in 81% of those observations, while Ether declined in 79%. On ordinary stock-market days, each cryptocurrency fell roughly 49% of the time.

The frequency of losses during severe equity declines was 32 percentage points higher for Bitcoin and 30 points higher for Ether compared to typical trading days. While average correlations showed a less dramatic story—Bitcoin's correlation with the S&P 500 was 0.29 and Ether's was 0.31—both readings reached roughly 0.50 in 2026.

Ether underperforms Bitcoin during stress

Within crypto, Sentora found that holding Bitcoin instead of Ether reduced typical losses during the stock market's worst sessions since 2022. Ether underperformed Bitcoin on 79% of those days, with median dollar losses standing at 3.6% for Bitcoin and 5.6% for Ether.

The firm compared the ETH/BTC exchange rate, which showed Ether's median return was negative 1.52% on the worst equity days, against positive 0.67% on the best days, creating a 2.19-percentage-point gap between the two groups.

U.S. trading drives crypto volatility

Sentora's hourly analysis since U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024 revealed that U.S. trading hours accounted for 33% of Bitcoin's price variation and 30% of Ether's, despite representing only 17.1% of observed time.

In a typical U.S. trading hour, Bitcoin's average absolute move was 2.09 times its weekend-hour move, while Ether's equivalent ratio was 1.78. The study measured volatility timing without establishing causation between stock trading and crypto movements.

Exchange inflows and stablecoin supply

In its weekly briefing, Sentora reported $3.09 billion in net Bitcoin exchange inflows and $1.10 billion for Ether, totaling $4.19 billion. While exchange inflows generally leave more coins available to trade, the transfers don't confirm that holders sold them.

Stablecoin supply fell by $4.75 billion to $287.77 billion during the week, after declining every day for more than two weeks. The November selloff also carried substantial losses for leveraged traders, with CoinGlass recording approximately $1.08 billion in 24-hour crypto liquidations on Nov. 5.