The cryptocurrency market continues to recover from its mid-March 2020 lows and at the end of last month, Bitcoin (BTC) was up 22% for the year.
As reported by Blockchain.com, a block explorer and crypto wallet service provider, Bitcoin has outperformed other major assets that have generated a positive return for the year (for instance, gold which is up +6%).
However, BTC has been underperforming (slightly) long-dated US Treasuries (for example, TLT ETF + 23%) and a few other crypto assets such as Ethereum blockchain’s native token, Ether (ETH).
The report from Blockchain.com reveals that Ether outperformed BTC in April (57%) and YTD (64%). ETH has exhibited positive fundamentals this year, with steadily increasing ERC-20-based stablecoin use and progress towards Ethereum 2.0, a major system-wide upgrade from proof of work to a proof of stake based consensus on the Ethereum blockchain (along with several other major updates).
As noted in Blockchain.com’s report:
“US GDP shrank by nearly 5% in Q1 and over 30 million Americans have now filed unemployment claims in the last six weeks, but the S&P 500 index gained 13% on the month and is now only down 10% year-to-date.”
The report added:
“Amidst this economic environment, more and more evidence indicates that institutional and retail investors are looking to both Gold and Bitcoin as an alternative to buying stocks at present valuations.”
The BTC hash rate had confirmed the rebound Blockchain.com had been expecting in April, and was back to high levels for this year (however, it has been fluctuating because miners may be trying to figure out how to maintain operations after block rewards have been cut in half).
Confirmed BTC transactions gradually kept increasing during April.
The full report is available here.
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