Beyond IBIT: A sports betting ETF bitcoin traders may want to watch
The Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF (BETZ) and bitcoin share a strong positive correlation, with an interesting twist.
What to know:
- The Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF (BETZ) has shown a strong positive correlation with bitcoin, with a 365-day correlation coefficient of 0.91.
- Historically, BETZ has tended to peak and bottom weeks before bitcoin, with notable leads around the 2021 top and 2022 bottom, as well as in 2025.
- The BETZ-BTC relationship reinforces the view of bitcoin as a risk-sensitive macro asset rather than a safe haven.
That ETF is the NYSE-listed Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF (BETZ). The fund debuted in June 2020 and has since attracted only $98 million in net inflows. As of Tuesday, it had roughly $50 million in assets under management, which is paltry compared to the billions of dollars in the IBIT fund.
The 90-day correlation coefficient between the two assets was 0.73 at press time, according to data from TradingView. Meanwhile, the 365-day coefficient stood at 0.91. That translates into an R² of approximately 0.83, implying that over 80% of the variation in the two assets’ movements is statistically linked. Talk about moving in lockstep!
But here’s where it gets interesting. If you overlay the ETF price on BTC’s price chart, a clear pattern emerges, in that the fund tends to hit major peaks and bottoms a couple of weeks ahead of bitcoin market turnarounds.
The blue line represents bitcoin, and the white line, the BETZ ETF.
