Is Bitcoin Really a Safe Haven During Global Crises?

Bitcoin is often assigned a fixed identity. Supporters call it digital gold, while critics describe it as a speculative risk asset that is likely to fall when investors become cautious. Both descriptions can appear correct because Bitcoin does not respond to every crisis in the same way.

A new comparative review of Bitcoin and political uncertainty research¹ helps explain why the debate remains unresolved. After examining 153 unique documents published from 2017 through 2025, the researchers found that Bitcoin has been described as a safe haven, hedge, diversifier, volatility recipient, and risk amplifier. Its apparent role changes with the event, market, measurement period, and analytical method.

The paper also uncovers a less obvious problem. Researchers may reach different views of the field depending on whether they search Scopus or Web of Science. This matters beyond academia. If investors build portfolio assumptions from research that captures only part of the evidence, a seemingly rigorous conclusion can rest on an incomplete map.

Why Bitcoin’s Safe-Haven Status Remains Unsettled

A safe haven should preserve value, or at least avoid moving closely with falling risk assets, during periods of severe stress. A hedge has a broader job: reducing exposure to a particular risk over time. A diversifier can still be volatile, provided its returns are not perfectly aligned with the rest of a portfolio.

Those roles are related, but they are not interchangeable. Bitcoin may diversify a conventional portfolio across a long period without protecting it during the specific week when geopolitical tension triggers a liquidity shock. It may also respond differently to inflation fears, war, an election, a banking crisis, or an abrupt change in monetary policy.

The review finds exactly this kind of conditional behaviour. Some studies identify hedging or safe-haven properties, while others find contagion, spillovers, or greater risk. Securities.io has previously examined evidence showing that Bitcoin ETFs have not made BTC a safe haven. That does not mean Bitcoin can never protect a portfolio. It means institutional access alone has not transformed it into a consistently defensive asset.

The distinction becomes especially important during the first stage of a crisis. Investors facing margin calls or a sudden demand for cash may sell liquid assets regardless of their long-term thesis. Bitcoin can therefore decline alongside equities during an acute liquidation event, then diverge later as attention shifts toward currency risk, capital controls, sovereign debt, or monetary expansion.

The Database Problem Hidden Inside Financial Research

The review applied the same search strategy to Scopus and Web of Science, two major academic databases. At first glance, the results looked similar: Scopus returned 108 documents and Web of Science returned 104. Yet only 59 appeared in both collections.

In total, 61.4% of the combined literature was exclusive to one database. The difference was attributed to indexing policies rather than a faulty search. Scopus offered broader representation from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa region. It also leaned toward instrument-level empirical work. Web of Science was more concentrated in North American and European institutions and placed greater emphasis on theory, investor behaviour, and market-level dynamics.

This creates a form of selection risk. A review based only on Scopus may capture newer techniques and emerging-market perspectives but give less weight to established theoretical frameworks. A Web of Science-only review may appear more conceptually settled while overlooking regional and methodological diversity.

For investors, the lesson is not to dismiss academic research. It is to examine how a confident claim was constructed. The database, search terms, date range, crisis definition, and selected model can all influence the answer.

Political Uncertainty Is Not One Type of Shock

The reviewed literature commonly uses economic policy uncertainty, geopolitical risk, stock-market volatility, and event-specific crisis measures. These indicators capture different pressures. An election can change expected tax or regulatory policy without disrupting market infrastructure. A military conflict can affect energy prices, payment networks, currencies, and cross-border capital movement at the same time.

The IMF’s analysis of geopolitical risk and asset prices similarly shows that major geopolitical events can transmit through trade, risk premiums, and financial linkages. Emerging markets can experience larger effects than advanced economies, reinforcing the review’s concern that Bitcoin research remains too concentrated in Western markets.

This is particularly relevant because Bitcoin’s (BTC ) practical purpose may differ by jurisdiction. For an institutional investor in the United States, it may be a volatile portfolio allocation traded through regulated products. For someone facing currency instability or restricted access to conventional hedges, its portability and independence from domestic banks may be more important than short-term correlation with the S&P 500.

A more useful investor framework would therefore ask:

• What specific risk is the allocation intended to hedge?
• Over what period must the protection work?
• How did Bitcoin behave during comparable crisis phases?
• Does the evidence include the relevant country and market structure?

This replaces the binary safe-haven question with a portfolio-design question. Bitcoin does not need to behave like gold in every downturn to have value, but it should not be assigned a defensive role without evidence that matches the intended use.

Better Models Could Change How Investors Measure Bitcoin Risk

The literature has progressed from linear models and conventional causality tests toward GARCH-MIDAS, copulas, quantile regression, and event studies. These tools are better equipped to detect asymmetric relationships, tail dependence, and changes across market regimes.

Machine learning, however, remains peripheral in both databases. That is surprising because the problem is well suited to models that can evaluate nonlinear interactions among news intensity, liquidity, volatility, investor sentiment, monetary policy, and geopolitical indicators.

The next advance may come from hybrid systems rather than replacing economics with an opaque prediction engine. An econometric model can preserve interpretable relationships, while machine learning can detect regime changes or interactions that a fixed specification misses. Such systems could estimate when Bitcoin is behaving like a high-beta technology asset, an independent monetary asset, or a channel through which stress moves across markets.

There are limits. A model trained on past crises may fail when market structure changes. Spot ETFs, deeper derivatives markets, corporate treasury adoption, and new regulations can alter who trades Bitcoin and why. Recent Securities.io coverage of whether Bitcoin has become an institutional-grade market illustrates why improved infrastructure should be evaluated separately from safe-haven performance.

Investing In Regulated Cryptocurrency Risk Management

CME Group

The research points toward a practical need regardless of whether Bitcoin ultimately behaves as a hedge or a risk asset: investors require tools to manage its volatility. CME Group provides a direct way for equity investors to gain exposure to the regulated market infrastructure supporting that activity.

The company operates cryptocurrency futures and options that allow institutions and sophisticated traders to hedge Bitcoin exposure, express views in either direction, and manage risk without relying solely on spot-market transactions. CME Group expanded this infrastructure further by launching 24/7 cryptocurrency futures and options trading in May 2026.

This makes CME Group relevant without requiring a prediction that Bitcoin will rise. Greater institutional participation, more complex hedging requirements, and persistent uncertainty can support demand for regulated derivatives even when market sentiment is negative. The company is therefore tied to the maturation of cryptocurrency risk management rather than to a simple long-Bitcoin thesis.

Investors should still consider competition, regulatory change, trading-volume cycles, and the possibility that periods of low volatility reduce derivatives activity. CME Group is also a diversified exchange operator, so cryptocurrency products represent only one component of a much broader business.

Bitcoin Is A Conditional Hedge, Not A Permanent Label

The review does not prove that Bitcoin is or is not a safe haven. Instead, it demonstrates why a universal answer remains elusive. Bitcoin’s behaviour depends on the shock, timeframe, location, investor base, liquidity conditions, and model used to evaluate it.

Its most consequential finding may be that the evidence base itself changes depending on the database selected. Two research reviews can contain almost the same number of papers yet describe meaningfully different intellectual landscapes.

For investors, that is a warning against treating labels as portfolio strategy. Bitcoin may provide diversification or protection under particular conditions, but those conditions need to be defined in advance. The better question is not whether Bitcoin is always safe. It is when, against what risk, and for whom it has behaved defensively.

References:

¹ Benkaddour, A., Guennoun, A., Bengana, I., & Knani, R. (2026). Bitcoin and political uncertainty: A comparative bibliometric and thematic review from Scopus and Web of Science. Social Sciences & Humanities Open, 14, 103455. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2026.103455