Bitcoin Outperforms Stocks and Gold Pushing Crypto Market Higher
2 min read
It was another strong day on the crypto markets as research highlighted Bitcoin’s market-beating performance when compared to traditional stocks and shares.
According to a note from analytics firm Messari, Bitcoin in comparison to real estate, stocks, gold and bonds delivers a higher rate of return over a four year period.
Bitcoin’s low correlation with other asset classes has made it an increasingly attractive asset to offset any losses seen in other parts of investor’s portfolios, said Mira Christanto, the Messari report author.
The report noted renewed interest from sovereign wealth and pension funds, concluding, “they have realized this opportunity and have begun new allocation strategies to maximize long-term value.”
The news helped crypto global market cap record its fourth straight day of growth. Prices ticked up 2.58% over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin took a healthy jump up with a 4.35% rise, thanks to its surge into the $16,000 at the time of writing.
Bitcoin Futures sentiment stayed strongly in the “buy” category as contracts bought in USD, EUR and Japanese Yen are all in the green.
Ethereum only saw marginal gains as the network suffered an unexpected hard fork, after Infura crashed.
Several exchanges suspended ERC20 token withdrawal services. But traders shrugged it off, pushing the price as far as $476, before settling into the $460s.
That sudden movement pushed Ethereum to hover around its all-time high for 2020, adding further fuel to crypto’s accelerating bull run.
Tech Stocks fight back
It was a mixed day in the markets. The S&P, Dow and Nasdaq Futures are all down in early European trading after the tech-centric Nasdaq saw a comeback after three days of investors cashing out of tech stocks in favour of bargains elsewhere.
But that trend seems to have come to a halt, as shares in FAANG stocks recovered, with Apple up 3% in the day’s trading.
The initial hubris around vaccine hopes appears to have been replaced with the harsher reality that there’s still a long way to go until economies can operate at full capacity.
In the US, daily COVID cases have stayed stubbornly above the 100,000 mark since November 4, threatening to cripple the economy long before a vaccine can be distributed across the country.
There are now 21.5 million Americans on unemployment benefits, and with best estimates putting a nationwide rollout of a vaccine somewhere around easter, traders are going to have to tread carefully in the months to come.
