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Bitcoin (BTC) scraped the bottom of the barrel in the third quarter of the year, registering a loss of 11.1% for investors, barely beating long-term treasuries, which netted -11.9% over the same timeframe.
Greg Cipolaro, Global Head of Research at Bitcoin firm NYDIG, wrote about the crypto’s poor performance and how it defies recent events in the crypto space.
Cipolaro pointed to favorable court cases, macroeconomic changes, the recent “quagmire” over government funding, the debate on U.S. debt, and the “ongoing efforts to secure approval for a spot Bitcoin ETF,” highlighting how none of these developments managed to push Bitcoin past the upper bound of its current range–which he said sits at $31,000.
Bitcoin, however, wasn’t the only asset to register losses last quarter. In fact, almost every asset class—including gold and other precious metals, the U.S. stock market, and real estate—suffered important percentage drops.
Notably, only four assets celebrated wins in the quarter, with commodities gaining 15.5%, seconded by cash at 1.3%.
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Embattled Bitcoin miner Greenidge Generation has finalized its debt restructuring plans with investment bank B.Riley and crypto investment firm NYDIG, reducing its total debts by $61 million. In December 2022, the miner announced that there was “substantial doubt” about its capacity to continue as a business, saying that its board of directors had actively discussed the possibility of voluntary bankruptcy. Greenidge said the new agreements with its two major lenders have reduced its debt balanc...
Economist for the Heritage Foundation, Peter St. Onge, said a momentary pause in rising prices might be behind Bitcoin’s meager performance. “I think the main driver near-term has been inflation looking more sedate,” he told Decrypt, adding that gold also feels these effects.
This trend might not be long-lived, however. St. Onge pointed out that recent events in Israel might trigger price action in financial assets. “We’ll have to see what happens in the Middle East,” he said, explaining that “hard assets tend to shore up, but risk assets go down.”
For him, “Bitcoin is a bit of both.”
Bitcoin Soars 30% Over the Week as Global Banks Roil
After smashing through the $28,000 mark on Sunday, Bitcoin (BTC) hit the year’s high of $28,503 on Monday morning before a slight correction to $28,375 at the time of writing, according to data from CoinGecko. The latest price action means the leading cryptocurrency is up 4% in the day, and as much as 28.4% over the last week, making it one of the best performers in the market. Bitcoin last changed hands at these levels in June last year amid the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and the contagion...
St. Onge’s views differ from those of NYDIG’s global head of research.
Cipolaro sees “persistently” high inflation, rising interest rates, “recession worries,” and seasonality weighed on returns, highlighting that Bitcoin tends to showcase dismal performances in the third quarter of every year. Perhaps in an effort to give investors hope, however, he wrote that the “lackluster performance” has a silver lining: the fourth quarter is historically one of the asset’s best quarters.
In spite of its most recent quarterly performance, Bitcoin investors will have to wait and see if the top cryptocurrency recovers its early 2023 trend, which has seen the asset on fire. Bitcoin has gained 63% on the year, only one of four to register double-digit gains, and is eclipsing its closest contender, U.S. Large Cap Growth Funds by more than double.
