The 30-year Treasury yield cleared 5% this year and is sitting at its highest level since 2007. That means every dollar sitting in bitcoin or any non-yielding asset is a dollar not earning that 5%. Several analysts have pointed to these elevated bond yields as a direct drag on bitcoin’s upside recently.
The elevated cost of capital already hurt bitcoin during the 2025 bull cycle.
The evidence sits in the divergence between BTC’s dollar-denominated spot price and its price adjusted for the cost of long-duration capital, or the 30-year yield. Bitcoin’s spot price rose to $126,000 in 2025, well above the previous cycle’s high of nearly $70,000. But priced against the 30-year yield, it did something it had never done before: it fell well short of its 2021 high, breaking a pattern of setting a new peak, on this measure, every cycle since inception.
Additionally, that same ratio has now completed a…
