Beyond IBIT: A sports betting ETF bitcoin traders may want to watch
Key takeaways
- By Omkar Godbole|Edited by Jamie Crawley May 12, 2026, 10:11 a.m. 2 min read Make preferred on BTC shares a strong positive correlation with a betting ETF.
- That ETF is the NYSE-listed Roundhill Sports Betting & iGaming ETF (BETZ).
- The 90-day correlation coefficient between the two assets was 0.73 at press time, according to data from TradingView.
By Omkar Godbole|Edited by Jamie Crawley May 12, 2026, 10:11 a.m. 2 min read Make preferred on BTC shares a strong positive correlation with a betting ETF. (Lucas23/Pixabay)What to know: The Roundhill Sports Betting & i Gaming 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. In this articleBTCBTC$80,984.66◢0.33%CROCRO$0.08090◢8.30%Alternative investment vehicles such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), led by BlackRock's IBIT, hold sway over bitcoin's price. That is well known by now.
But another ETF from the betting world has been moving in lockstep with bitcoin’s BTC$80,984.66 cycles since 2020, with an interesting pattern that, to the naked eye, appears to show leading signals for BTC trend changes.
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.