What actually outruns Bitcoin?

BTC lost more than half its value since its peak in October 202 and has rallied 46.8% since its June 30 low, just short of a formal bull leg. ETH and SOL fell harder than BTC on the way down, and the question is whether anything outruns it on the way up (without any external leverage). Our candidate set is the ten instruments seen below.

We run two tests

1. Weekly beta to BTC split into upside and downside

2. Each candidate's return against BTC across six bull legs and nine drawdowns since March 2020.

As shown below, only ETH, SOL, MSTR and COIN have a 2Y beta to BTC that sits reliably above 1 alongside BTC explaining most of their moves. Miners are volatile but not much tied to BTC (at least not since their AI pivots). 

ETH and SOL give back more in BTC sell-offs than they add in rallies. Though for ETH, the gap has narrowed lately, with ETH's 1Y split at 1.39 vs. 1.48. MSTR is symmetric at 1.23 on both sides over 2Y and HYPE actually outperforms (slightly) on the way up and (materially) on the way down though with an R² of 0.18 it’s too noisy to rank. 

ETH, SOL and HYPE betas have cooled from their late 2025 peaks to about 1.2, so the amplification is real but smaller than a year ago.

MSTR's beta is rising to its highest reading since 2021 while RIOT's slips below 1, so treasury equities are amplifying BTC more than miners are. MSTR's beta is the strongest current signal, which makes sense as it reflects corporate leverage and the mNAV premium.

Now for test two: bull- and bear-market behaviour. We count a bull leg as any BTC rally of 50% or more between 25% reversals in daily closes, which gives six complete legs since March 2020. No candidate beat BTC in all of them. SOL came closest, beating BTC in four of five legs with a median multiple of 3.54x. MARA and RIOT won four of six (medians of 1.62x and 1.68x), ETH three of six (1.06x) and MSTR two of five (0.64x).

Candidates often outperformed during heated markets but amplified BTC's sell-offs more reliably than its rallies. MARA fell harder than BTC in eight of nine drawdowns, and ETH, MSTR, RIOT and CLSK in seven of nine. SOL, at 149% vs. 102%, is the only multi-cycle candidate skewed to the upside.

As mentioned earlier, BTC is up ~47% from its June 30 low, short of the 50% bar, so this leg is still provisional. Thus far, DATs have led it, with BMNR up 102.8% and MSTR up 90.1%, while CLSK, MARA and RIOT have fallen 14.2%, 19.6% and 29.4%.

Now let's rank our candidates. Ranking nine candidates by upside beta times correlation and by upside minus downside capture gives a rank correlation of -0.10, and -0.67 when both use the same two-year window. HYPE ranks 1st on capture but 8th on beta times correlation, with a correlation of 0.37. MSTR and COIN rank last on capture because they amplify both directions about equally, yet both pair beta above 1 with correlation near 0.8 and 0.7.

So I lied, a third test is needed, and beta stability settles it because the disagreement is about whether a beta is BTC exposure or noise. Five candidates kept a 180-day beta near or above 1 over the past two years and stayed at least 0.7 correlated with BTC: SOL (above 1 on 100% of days, correlation 0.83), MSTR (100%, 0.80), BMNR (100%, 0.76), ETH (98%, 0.88) and COIN (89%, 0.72). MARA, CLSK, HYPE and RIOT fail on correlation, at 0.50, 0.41, 0.54 and 0.36.

This means we have a winner…and it’s SOL.

SOL is the most consistent unlevered amplifier of BTC in the set. It held a 180-day beta above 1 on 100% of days over the past two years, beat BTC in four of five complete bull legs at a median 3.54x multiple and kept its bootstrap capture spread above zero (0.30 to 1.99), for a composite rank of 2.0. ETH and COIN sit in the 1.2x to 1.35x beta band where BTC explains most of their moves, but neither stands out on bull-leg capture, and both straddle zero in the bootstrap. Full scorecard below.

SOL's lead comes with a downside tilt so I will give a shoutout to ETH as a better risk-adjusted play. No BTC amplifier has beaten BTC itself on risk-adjusted return over the past two years but ETH has the closest correlation and the highest Sharpe ratio vs. the other candidates.

So what’s the key takeaway here? If you want exposure to BTC, the best instrument you can buy is BTC. 

— Marc

Physical infrastructure crypto projects just had their best quarter ever, recording nearly $6M in revenue. However, total crypto revenue was ~$1.3 billion last quarter, so that’s only 0.45%.

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