Three answers to the same worry about paper money. Do they move together?
As of Sep 2026 gold traded at $3,988 an ounce, -1.52% over 30 days and +19.12% over the past year. Its correlation with the trade-weighted dollar, measured on daily returns over 90 days, reads -0.42 — inverse (typical). This page plots gold and the dollar alongside total stablecoin supply.
Gold is priced in dollars, so a weaker dollar mechanically means a higher gold price in dollar terms, and the two have moved against each other most of the time on this series. Stablecoins are the dollar-pegged answer to the same anxiety about currency value, which makes them the odd member of the group: they hedge the debasement of every currency except the one they are pegged to. Plotting all three together shows when anti-debasement demand looks broad and when stablecoin growth is running on something internal to crypto. Nothing here establishes that any of the three moves the others.
Across all 90-day windows in the series (1627 windows), ordered by how often they occur.
901 of 1627 windows. Broad debasement hedging. Both expanding can reflect easing or expectations of it, which lowers real rates and tends to support both, or broader concerns about currency value that lift demand for non-fiat instruments. Gold and stablecoins serve different holders with different risk functions, so co-movement is a joint signal at most, never proof of a shared driver.
285 of 1627 windows. A crypto-specific tailwind. Stablecoin growth driven from inside crypto rather than by debasement hedging: a DeFi cycle, dollarization in particular corridors, exchange demand.
268 of 1627 windows. A strong-dollar headwind. Broad dollar strength weighs on gold, which is priced in dollars, and on crypto through risk appetite. Associated with aggressive tightening or a flight to quality into dollar assets.
173 of 1627 windows. A gold-specific tailwind. Gold responding to something bearish for crypto: tightening into persistent inflation, or geopolitical risk pulling institutional safe-haven flows without supporting risk-on markets. 2022 sits here.
Gold. The SPDR Gold Shares (GLD) closing price times ten, as a spot proxy. The LBMA price is no longer carried by the free public feed this pipeline uses.
What the proxy costs. GLD accrues a 0.40% annual sponsor fee against net asset value, and the trust sells bullion to pay it, so the proxy falls below spot cumulatively and in one direction. Over the 6.7 years drawn here that amounts to roughly 2.6%. Day-to-day deviations are premium and discount noise and stay within about 0.1%; it is the comparison between two distant points on the line that needs the caveat, not the shape of the line.
The dollar. US Federal Reserve series DTWEXBGS, the Trade-Weighted US Dollar Index Broad, published each business day. Its own page carries the full methodology.
The correlation. Computed on daily percentage changes, not price levels, over a rolling 90-calendar-day window — 63 daily observations in the current window, from Jun 2026. Two trending series can show high correlation in levels even when their daily moves are unrelated; returns correlation measures whether gold and the dollar index actually move together day to day. A window this page cannot measure publishes nothing rather than a figure over whatever data happened to be available.
Band labels. The boundaries at -0.5, -0.2 and 0.2 are Stablecoin Beat’s own; no external standard divides this measure. They are reported with the share of windows each holds, above, rather than described.
Changes over 30 days and one year. Measured between the latest observation and the last observation on or before the calendar cutoff, not by counting rows. The grid is business-day with steps of one to five days, so counting rows overshoots.
What this page does not show. That any of the three series moves the others. They can rise together because a third condition moved all of them, and they serve different holders: gold custody is dominated by central banks, sovereign funds and large private holders, while dollar stablecoins are held largely by retail and businesses outside the United States and by crypto-native traders. Co-movement during a debasement episode is consistent with overlapping demand and is not evidence of substitution.
Updated daily. See the methodology for data sources and coverage.
Gold, bitcoin and stablecoins are all responses to perceived risks of fiat debasement, and they solve different problems. Gold carries no counterparty risk and is neither programmable nor quick to move. Stablecoins are the dollar-pegged version: programmable, liquid, and carrying issuer risk — and they hedge the debasement of currencies other than the dollar, not the dollar itself. Plotting the two together shows when anti-debasement demand looks broad and when stablecoin growth is running on something internal to crypto.
Gold is priced in dollars, so mechanically a weaker dollar tends to mean a higher gold price in dollar terms. The rolling correlation of daily returns is negative most of the time — typically between −0.3 and −0.6 — and on this series it currently reads -0.42, inverse (typical). When it moves toward zero, something other than the exchange rate is driving gold: usually inflation expectations or safe-haven demand.
Because two series that are both trending will correlate in levels whether or not their daily moves have anything to do with each other. A correlation of levels between gold and a dollar index largely measures that both drifted over the window. Correlating daily percentage changes asks the question the page is actually asking: when the dollar moves, does gold move the other way that day. This page computed levels until 31 August 2026; the change is recorded in the methodology changelog.
Counted rather than described, over rolling 90-day windows: gold up, supply down 10.6%; gold down, supply up 17.5%; both rising 55.4%; both falling 16.5%. The most common is both rising. Reporting the frequency beside each combination is the point: an adjective for how often something happens can be wrong, and a count cannot.
The sharpest divergence in this series is March 2020. Gold fell 12.53% inside the month, from $1,578 on 9 March 2020 to $1,380 — a liquidity event, with gold sold for cash alongside everything else — while stablecoin supply rose +5.24% over the same month. 2022 is the other case: supply ended the year -14.97% while gold ended it +0.78%.
Not on this evidence. Both respond to broadly similar forces — real rates, dollar strength, risk appetite — on different timescales: gold reprices quickly, while supply moves only as fast as issuance and redemption. Dates mark each series’ minimum during the 2022–2023 drawdown: gold’s trough on 26 September 2022 preceded the supply trough on 19 August 2023 by 327 days. That is a single episode, not a measured lead-lag relationship, and one turning point cannot establish one.
The LBMA price is no longer carried by the free public feed this pipeline uses, so the series is the SPDR Gold Shares closing price times ten, which tracks the spot ounce closely. It is not free: GLD accrues a 0.40% annual sponsor fee against net asset value and the trust sells bullion to pay it, so the proxy falls below spot cumulatively and in one direction. Across the 6.7 years drawn here that amounts to roughly 2.6%. Day-to-day deviations are noise and stay within about 0.1%; a comparison between two distant points on the line is the one to treat with care.
That either series moves the other. Gold and stablecoin supply can rise together because a third condition moved both, and they can diverge because one of them is responding to something the other is blind to. They also serve different holders: gold custody is dominated by central banks, sovereign funds and large private holders, while dollar stablecoins are held largely by retail and businesses outside the United States and by crypto-native traders. Co-movement during a debasement episode is consistent with overlapping demand, and is not evidence of substitution between the two.