Stealth rally puts Bitcoin atop the quarterly scoreboard

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Bitcoin's surprising fast exit from its «crypto winter» has once again put the notoriously volatile digital currency atop the leader-board in the first quarter for being the best-performing asset class by a wide margin. With a roughly 70% gain, Bitcoin is closing out its best quarter since the three months ended March 2021, when it surged some 103%, Bloomberg data show. That vastly outstrips the S&P 500's 5.5% year-to-date advance, the Nasdaq 100's 19% uptick and the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF's 5.3% jump. Long-time participants note that volatility is expected — and is even part of the attraction to investors in the relatively embryonic asset class. Bitcoin burst onto the mainstream consciousness with a more-than 1,000% annual gain in 2017, only to post a 74% drop the following year in what became known as a crypto winter. Then after three consecutive annual increases, it tumbled 64% last year amid a series of industry scandals and bankruptcies. «For many crypto market observers, it's not at all a surprise,» said Noelle Acheson, author of the «Crypto Is Macro Now» newsletter, of this year's rally. «All the signs were pointing to a strong price floor starting last November, and it was just a matter of time before either the liquidity narrative changed (which it did in early January) or longer-term investors saw a store-of-value opportunity (which seems to have also happened).»

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