Why Brookings Senior Fellow Robin Brooks Says Bitcoin Is Not a Safe Haven

Brooks frames this as a definitive market test: a genuine safe haven should rally when currency debasement fears rise. Bitcoin has not done so .

Key Arguments Against Bitcoin as a Safe Haven

1. Bitcoin is not part of the debasement trade. Brooks states this bluntly, emphasizing that the asset has "consistently underperformed precious metals" during the multi-year cycle of fiscal and monetary expansion that drove debasement fears .

2. Price action disproves the narrative. Brooks argues that the claim Bitcoin is a safe haven is "a matter of perception, but it's validated by price action" — and the price action shows persistent underperformance against gold .

3. Bitcoin behaves like a risk asset, not a hedge. During market stress, Brooks notes, Bitcoin tends to fall in lockstep with equities rather than holding or gaining value. He has also argued that gold itself has lost some safe-haven characteristics, now trading as a "pro-cyclical, high-beta asset" that moves with the S&P 500 and Bitcoin .

4. It is a speculative investment, not digital gold. In his Brookings article "The brutal truth about Bitcoin," Brooks notes that Bitcoin has "no intrinsic value and is not backed by anything" and has failed its stated monetary objectives, becoming purely a speculative investment .

The Evidence Brooks Cites

• Gold's sustained outperformance over Bitcoin during the multi-year debasement trade cycle.
• Gold's rising correlation with equities: Brooks has pointed out that gold's correlation with the S&P 500 surged to over 0.50 in recent months, a stark change from its historical near-zero correlation .
• Bitcoin's rising equity correlation: Bitcoin's correlation with equities climbed to around 0.55 between late 2025 and early 2026, undermining the safe-haven label .
• The "debasement trade" test itself: If Bitcoin were digital gold, it should have rallied alongside precious metals when fiscal and monetary expansion drove debasement fears. Brooks observes that instead, Bitcoin materially underperformed .

Academic research supports elements of Brooks' view. A 2020 study in the journal Finance Research Letters found that Bitcoin did not act as a safe haven during the COVID-19 bear market, instead decreasing in price in lockstep with the S&P 500 . A 2021 study found that Bitcoin prices decline in response to financial uncertainty shocks, unlike gold . However, other studies have found that Bitcoin can act as a hedge or weak safe haven for specific currencies or in shorter time frames, so the evidence is mixed .

How Gold's Recent Performance Supports Brooks' View

The raw numbers strongly back Brooks' thesis:

• Over the past year (August 2025 – August 2026): Gold rallied approximately 28%, from around $3,400 to roughly $4,330 per ounce. Over the same period, Bitcoin declined about 44%, falling from ~$117,000 to ~$65,000. That is a performance gap of over 70 percentage points in gold's favor .

• In 2025 alone: Gold surged 65%, delivering one of its best years on record. Bitcoin fell 7% that same year . The debasement trade was "decisively won by precious metals over bitcoin" .

• From Bitcoin's peak: Bitcoin hit an all-time high near $126,200 on October 6, 2025, but has since declined roughly 48%. Meanwhile, gold continued to hold substantially more of its value over the same stretch .

• The pattern validates Brooks' core claim: In the specific environment where a safe haven should shine — currency debasement fears, central bank gold buying, and inflation anxiety — gold delivered strong positive returns while Bitcoin suffered steep losses. Brooks uses this exact divergence as his primary evidence that the market treats gold and Bitcoin fundamentally differently, and that Bitcoin has not earned the safe-haven label .

A Surprising Twist: Brooks Also Questions Gold

Brooks' analysis does not spare gold. In 2026, he argued that gold itself has lost some safe-haven characteristics, now trading as a "pro-cyclical, high-beta asset" that amplifies rather than mitigates sell-offs . He pointed to gold's correlation with the S&P 500 surging to over 0.50, roughly the same level as Bitcoin .

"Gold has traditionally been a safe haven asset, which means it's been a good place to hide when other assets plummet," Brooks wrote in April 2026. "That hasn't been true in the past six weeks of war. Gold is down ten percent, which is far more than the S&P 500 that's down less than one percent."

This has led Brooks to argue that neither Bitcoin nor gold currently functions as a true safe haven in the traditional sense .

The Bottom Line

Robin Brooks' case against Bitcoin as a safe haven rests on observable market behavior during the 2025–2026 debasement trade. The price action — gold up 65% in 2025, Bitcoin down 7% — provides what Brooks considers an empirical verdict. While the academic literature is mixed on Bitcoin's safe-haven properties, the performance data during this specific period strongly supports his argument. Whether this pattern holds in future crises remains an open question, but for now, Brooks' warning is clear: Bitcoin has not earned the digital gold label.