Cathie Wood, founder of ARK Invest, offered an important explanation for the number "0.06" in her newly released 2026 outlook report .
Cathie Wood points out that Bitcoin's price correlation with traditional major assets is relatively low, making it an potential tool for increasing "return per unit of risk" in asset allocation. She cites weekly return data from January 2020 to early January 2026 as an example, showing that the correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and gold is approximately 0.14, significantly lower than the correlation of approximately 0.27 between the S&P 500 index and bonds.
The report shows that Bitcoin has the lowest correlation with bonds, with a correlation coefficient of only about 0.06. Its correlation with gold and real estate investment trusts (REITs) is slightly higher, while its correlation coefficient with the S&P 500 index is about 0.28. Even in the range of higher correlations, Bitcoin's correlation with other assets is still lower than that of most traditional asset portfolios; for example, the correlation between the S&P 500 index and REITs is as high as 0.79.
Institutional supply creates demand gap
After the 2024 halving, Bitcoin's annualized new supply remained at approximately 0.8%, and is projected to decrease to 0.4% by 2028. While gold supply expands due to price increases, Bitcoin's supply is constrained by its code.
Because the supply side is almost unaffected by prices, any increase in demand directly drives up prices. The ARK report points out that since the end of 2022, Bitcoin has seen a cumulative increase of approximately 360%, most of which comes from the combination of fiat currency liquidity and Bitcoin's scarcity, rather than pure speculation.
Regardless of whether investors agree with the vision of crypto assets, the figure of 0.06 has already been incorporated into institutional risk control models. Cathie Wood explicitly stated that a low correlation coefficient can significantly improve the Sharpe ratio; if the target volatility of the portfolio is fixed, not allocating Bitcoin will passively reduce the stock weight, indirectly lowering the overall return. For asset managers, ignoring this asset is no longer a matter of ideology.
