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Two years ago today, Bitcoin hit its highest price ever, reaching $19,783. It was the culmination of an incredible year for the digital currency, which had started 2017 at about $1,000. Since hitting its peak, however, Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly. It fell 73% in 2018 and has risen 85% this yearbut has not come close to retesting its previous highs. On Tuesday, it was trading near $6,500.
An investor who bought at the start of 2017 would still be up more than 500%, dwarfing the S&P 500s 43% gain over that period. People who held Bitcoin for the entire period clearly did well, though one adviser found that Bitcoin has been a much trickier trade over shorter time spans during this period. Dan Wiener, chairman of Adviser Investments and founder of the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors, analyzed Bitcoins price movements since the start of 2017 and found that the average five-day rolling return for Bitcoin was 1.5%. The range of five-day gains and losses, however, was enormous, with a high of 47% and a low of negative 29%. By my calculations investors lost money 45% of the time when they held Bitcoin for 10 days, he wrote in an email on Monday. Wiener is clearly not a fan, writing that Bitcoin is for traders disconnected from the real moneymaking potential of stocks.
Beyond the price action, what has changed for Bitcoin in the past two years? On the one hand, its more widely embraced by institutions than ever, with NYSE-owner Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) offering Bitcoin futures and custody services and Fidelity also servicing institutional investors. But its market cap remains too small to attract the big moneythe worlds top banks remain on the sidelines, and many of the retail investors who had bought in near the top have stayed away.
The biggest change in the past two years is arguably that Bitcoins competition has changed. Two years ago, the cryptocurrency market was awash in initial coin offerings (ICOs) that launched new digital currencies that promised to decentralize various industries, from social media to cloud computing. Investors expected one or more of those coins to break out to challenge Bitcoins dominance. But none of them have taken off since. Bitcoin still accounts for 67% of the market value of cryptocurrencies, according to Coinmarketcap.com.
Bitcoins real competition now comes from two areascorporations like Facebook looking to use the blockchain technology that undergirds Bitcoin to create their own currencies, and governments that want to create digital coins backed by their own treasuries. The question now is: Will the most important digital currencies be decentralized like Bitcoin, corporate-backed like Facebooks Libra, or government-controlled, like Chinas cryptocurrency plans?
The Libra project has run into regulatory issues, but could still launch as soon as next year, perhaps in a less robust form than the company first expected. As far as national currencies, China has been working on a digital currency project since 2014 and has reportedly accelerated those efforts this year.
China is going to have tokenized digital cryptocurrency in the next six months or 18 months or 24 months, said Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings, in an interview last month with Barrons. Thats the second biggest economy in the world. We are going to be dragged into the digital and tokenized world kicking or screaming.
Write to Avi Salzman at avi.salzman@barrons.com
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Bitcoin Peaked 2 Years Ago. New Competition Is on the Way. - Barron's