Bitcoin

The live Bitcoin price today is €26,557.14 EUR with a 24-hour trading volume of €44,177,255,958 EUR. We update our BTC to EUR price in real-time. Bitcoin is up 4.70% in the last 24 hours. The current CoinMarketCap ranking is #1, with a live market cap of €513,155,838,488 EUR. It has a circulating supply of 19,322,706 BTC coins and a max. supply of 21,000,000 BTC coins.

If you would like to know where to buy Bitcoin at the current rate, the top cryptocurrency exchanges for trading in Bitcoin stock are currently Binance, BingX, OKX, Deepcoin, and Bybit. You can find others listed on our crypto exchanges page.

What Is Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency originally described in a 2008 whitepaper by a person, or group of people, using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. It was launched soon after, in January 2009.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer online currency, meaning that all transactions happen directly between equal, independent network participants, without the need for any intermediary to permit or facilitate them. Bitcoin was created, according to Nakamoto’s own words, to allow “online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

Some concepts for a similar type of a decentralized electronic currency precede BTC, but Bitcoin holds the distinction of being the first-ever cryptocurrency to come into actual use.

Who Are the Founders of Bitcoin?
Bitcoin’s original inventor is known under a pseudonym, Satoshi Nakamoto. As of 2021, the true identity of the person — or organization — that is behind the alias remains unknown.

On October 31, 2008, Nakamoto published Bitcoin’s whitepaper, which described in detail how a peer-to-peer, online currency could be implemented. They proposed to use a decentralized ledger of transactions packaged in batches (called “blocks”) and secured by cryptographic algorithms — the whole system would later be dubbed “blockchain.”

Just two months later, on January 3, 2009, Nakamoto mined the first block on the Bitcoin network, known as the genesis block, thus launching the world’s first cryptocurrency. Bitcoin price was $0 when first introduced, and most Bitcoins were obtained via mining, which only required moderately powerful devices (e.g. PCs) and mining software. The first known Bitcoin commercial transaction occurred on May 22, 2010, when programmer Laszlo Hanyecz traded 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas. At Bitcoin price today in mid-September 2021, those pizzas would be worth an astonishing $478 million. This event is now known as “Bitcoin Pizza Day.” In July 2010, Bitcoin first started trading, with the Bitcoin price ranging from $0.0008 to $0.08 at that time.

However, while Nakamoto was the original inventor of Bitcoin, as well as the author of its very first implementation, he handed the network alert key and control of the code repository to Gavin Andresen, who later became lead developer at the Bitcoin Foundation. Over the years a large number of people have contributed to improving the cryptocurrency’s software by patching vulnerabilities and adding new features.

Bitcoin’s source code repository on GitHub lists more than 750 contributors, with some of the key ones being Wladimir J. van der Laan, Marco Falke, Pieter Wuille, Gavin Andresen, Jonas Schnelli and others.

What Makes Bitcoin Unique?
Bitcoin’s most unique advantage comes from the fact that it was the very first cryptocurrency to appear on the market.

It has managed to create a global community and give birth to an entirely new industry of millions of enthusiasts who create, invest in, trade and use Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in their everyday lives. The emergence of the first cryptocurrency has created a conceptual and technological basis that subsequently inspired the development of thousands of competing projects.

The entire cryptocurrency market — now worth more than $2 trillion — is based on the idea realized by Bitcoin: money that can be sent and received by anyone, anywhere in the world without reliance on trusted intermediaries, such as banks and financial services companies.

Thanks to its pioneering nature, BTC remains at the top of this energetic market after over a decade of existence. Even after Bitcoin has lost its undisputed dominance, it remains the largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization that surpassed the $1 trillion mark in 2021, after Bitcoin price hit an all-time high of $64,863.10 on April 14, 2021. This is owing in large part to growing institutional interest in Bitcoin, and the ubiquitousness of platforms that provide use-cases for BTC: wallets, exchanges, payment services, online games and more.

Related Pages:
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Want to keep track of Bitcoin prices live? Download the CoinMarketCap mobile app!

Want to convert Bitcoin price today to your desired fiat currency? Check out CoinMarketCap exchange rate calculator.

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How Much Bitcoin Is in Circulation?
Bitcoin’s total supply is limited by its software and will never exceed 21,000,000 coins. New coins are created during the process known as “mining”: as transactions are relayed across the network, they get picked up by miners and packaged into blocks, which are in turn protected by complex cryptographic calculations.

As compensation for spending their computational resources, the miners receive rewards for every block that they successfully add to the blockchain. At the moment of Bitcoin’s launch, the reward was 50 bitcoins per block: this number gets halved with every 210,000 new blocks mined — which takes the network roughly four years. As of 2020, the block reward has been halved three times and comprises 6.25 bitcoins.

Bitcoin has not been premined, meaning that no coins have been mined and/or distributed between the founders before it became available to the public. However, during the first few years of BTC’s existence, the competition between miners was relatively low, allowing the earliest network participants to accumulate significant amounts of coins via regular mining: Satoshi Nakamoto alone is believed to own over a million Bitcoin.

Mining Bitcoins can be very profitable for miners, depending on the current hash rate and the price of Bitcoin. While the process of mining Bitcoins is complex, we discuss how long it takes to mine one Bitcoin on CoinMarketCap Alexandria — as we wrote above, mining Bitcoin is best understood as how long it takes to mine one block, as opposed to one Bitcoin. As of mid-September 2021, the Bitcoin mining reward is capped to 6.25 BTC after the 2020 halving, which is roughly $299,200 in Bitcoin price today.

How Is the Bitcoin Network Secured?
Bitcoin is secured with the SHA-256 algorithm, which belongs to the SHA-2 family of hashing algorithms, which is also used by its fork Bitcoin Cash (BCH), as well as several other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption
Over the past few decades, consumers have become more curious about their energy consumption and personal effects on climate change. When news stories started swirling regarding the possible negative effects of Bitcoin’s energy consumption, many became concerned about Bitcoin and criticized this energy usage. A report found that each Bitcoin transaction takes 1,173 KW hours of electricity, which can “power the typical American home for six weeks.” Another report calculates that the energy required by Bitcoin annually is more than the annual hourly energy usage of Finland, a country with a population of 5.5 million.

The news has produced commentary from tech entrepreneurs to environmental activists to political leaders alike. In May 2021, Tesla CEO Elon Musk even stated that Tesla would no longer accept the cryptocurrency as payment, due to his concern regarding its environmental footprint. Though many of these individuals have condemned this issue and move on, some have prompted solutions: how do we make Bitcoin more energy efficient? Others have simply taken the defensive position, stating that the Bitcoin energy problem may be exaggerated.

At present, miners are heavily reliant on renewable energy sources, with estimates suggesting that Bitcoin’s use of renewable energy may span anywhere from 40-75%. However, to this point, critics claim that increasing Bitcoin’s renewable energy usage will take away from solar sources powering other sectors and industries like hospitals, factories or homes. The Bitcoin mining community also attests that the expansion of mining can help lead to the construction of new solar and wind farms in the future.

Furthermore, some who defend Bitcoin argue that the gold and banking sector — individually — consume twice the amount of energy as Bitcoin, making the criticism of Bitcoin’s energy consumption a nonstarter. Moreover, the energy consumption of Bitcoin can easily be tracked and traced, which the same cannot be said of the other two sectors. Those who defend Bitcoin also note that the complex validation process creates a more secure transaction system, which justifies the energy usage.

Another point that Bitcoin proponents make is that the energy usage required by Bitcoin is all-inclusive such that it encompasess the process of creating, securing, using and transporting Bitcoin. Whereas with other financial sectors, this is not the case. For example, when calculating the carbon footprint of a payment processing system like Visa, they fail to calculate the energy required to print money or power ATMs, or smartphones, bank branches, security vehicles, among other components in the payment processing and banking supply chain.

What exactly are governments and nonprofits doing to reduce Bitcoin energy consumption? Earlier this year in the U.S., a congressional hearing was held on the topic where politicians and tech figures discussed the future of crypto mining in the U.S, specifically highlighting their concerns regarding fossil fuel consumption. Leaders also discussed the current debate surrounding the coal-to-crypto trend, particularly regarding the number of coal plants in New York and Pennsylvania that are in the process of being repurposed into mining farms.

Aside from congressional hearings, there are private sector crypto initiatives dedicated to solving environmental issues such as the Crypto Climate Accord and Bitcoin Mining Council. In fact, the Crypto Climate Accord proposes a plan to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, And, due to the innovative potential of Bitcoin, it is reasonable to believe that such grand plans may be achieved.

What Is Bitcoin’s Role as a Store of Value?
Bitcoin is the first decentralized, peer-to-peer digital currency. One of its most important functions is that it is used as a decentralized store of value. In other words, it provides for ownership rights as a physical asset or as a unit of account. However, the latter store-of-value function has been debated. Many crypto enthusiasts and economists believe that high-scale adoption of the top currency will lead us to a new modern financial world where transaction amounts will be denominated in smaller units.

The smallest units of Bitcoin, 0.00000001 BTC, are called Satoshis (or Sats in short), in a nod to the pseudonymous creator. At Bitcoin price now, 1 Satoshi is equivalent to roughly $0.00048.

The top crypto is considered a store of value, like gold, for many — rather than a currency. This idea of the first cryptocurrency as a store of value, instead of a payment method, means that many people buy the crypto and hold onto it long-term (or HODL) rather than spending it on items like you would typically spend a dollar — treating it as digital gold.

Crypto Wallets
The most popular wallets for cryptocurrency include both hot and cold wallets. Cryptocurrency wallets vary from hot wallets and cold wallets. Hot wallets are able to be connected to the web, while cold wallets are used for keeping large amounts of coins outside of the internet.

Some of the top crypto cold wallets are Trezor, Ledger and CoolBitX. Some of the top crypto hot wallets include Exodus, Electrum and Mycelium.

Still not sure of which wallet to use? Check out CoinMarketCap Alexandria’s guide on the top cold wallets of 2021 and top hot wallets of 2021.

How Is Bitcoin’s Technology Upgraded?
A hard fork is a radical change to the protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and therefore requires all users to upgrade. For example, if users A and B are disagreeing on whether an incoming transaction is valid, a hard fork could make the transaction valid to users A and B, but not to user C.

A hard fork is a protocol upgrade that is not backward compatible. This means every node (computer connected to the Bitcoin network using a client that performs the task of validating and relaying transactions) needs to upgrade before the new blockchain with the hard fork activates and rejects any blocks or transactions from the old blockchain. The old blockchain will continue to exist and will continue to accept transactions, although it may be incompatible with other newer Bitcoin clients.

A soft fork is a change to the Bitcoin protocol wherein only previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid. Since old nodes will recognise the new blocks as valid, a soft fork is backward-compatible. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners upgrading to enforce the new rules.

Some examples of prominent cryptocurrencies that have undergone hard forks are the following: Bitcoin’s hard fork that resulted in Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum’s hard fork that resulted in Ethereum Classic.

Bitcoin Cash has been hard forked since its original forking, with the creation of Bitcoin SV. Read more about the difference between Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin SV here.

What Is Taproot?
Taproot is a soft fork that bundles together BIP 340, 341 and 342 and aims to improve the scalability, efficiency, and privacy of the blockchain by introducing several new features.

The two major changes are the introduction of the Merkelized Abstract Syntax Tree (MAST) and Schnorr Signature. MAST introduces a condition allowing the sender and recipient of a transaction to sign off on its settlement together. Schnorr Signature allows users to aggregate several signatures into one for a single transaction. This results in multi-signature transactions looking the same as regular transactions or more complex ones. By introducing this new address type, users can also save on transaction fees, as even complex transactions look like simple, single-signature ones.

Although HODLers will probably not notice a big impact, Taproot could become a key milestone to equipping the network with smart contract functionality. In particular, Schnorr Signatures would lay the foundation for more complex applications to be built on top of the existing blockchain, as users start switching to Taproot addresses primarily. If adopted by users, Taproot could, in the long run, result in the network developing its own DeFi ecosystem that rivals those on alternative blockchains like Ethereum.

What Is the Lightning Network?
The Lightning Network is an off-chain, layered payment protocol that operates bidirectional payment channels which allows instantaneous transfer with instant reconciliation. It enables private, high volume and trustless transactions between any two parties. The Lightning Network scales transaction capacity without incurring the costs associated with transactions and interventions on the underlying blockchain.

Who Are the Largest Corporate Holders of Bitcoin?
A few years ago, the idea that a publicly traded company might hold Bitcoin on its balance sheets seemed highly laughable. The flagship cryptocurrency was considered to be too volatile to be adopted by any serious business. Many top investors, including Warren Buffett, labeled the asset a “bubble waiting to pop.”

This negative sentiment appears to have been broken, with a number of corporate behemoths buying up Bitcoin since 2020. In particular, business intelligence firm MicroStrategy set the pace after it bought $425 million worth of Bitcoin in August and September 2020. Since then, many others have followed suit, including EV manufacturer Tesla.

MicroStrategy has by far the largest Bitcoin portfolio held by any publicly-traded company. The business analytics platform has adopted Bitcoin as its primary reserve asset, aggressively buying the cryptocurrency through 2021 and 2022. As of August 30, 2022, the company had 129,699 Bitcoin in its reserve, equivalent to just over $2.5 billion.

Other top corporate holders include Marathon Digital Holdings, with 10,054 BTC, Coinbase (9,000), Square Inc. (8,027), and Hut 8 Mining Corp. (7,078).

Is Bitcoin Political?
Bitcoin is becoming more political by the day, particularly after El Salvador began accepting the currency as legal tender. The country's president, Nayib Bukele, announced and implemented the decision almost unilaterally, dismissing criticism from his citizens, the Bank of England, the IMF, Vitalik Buterin and many others. Since the Bitcoin legal tender law was passed in September 2021, Bukele has also announced plans to build Bitcoin City, a city fully based on mining Bitcoin with geothermal energy from volcanoes.

Countries like Mexico, Russia and others have been rumored to be candidates also to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, but thus far, El Salvador stands alone.

On the flip side, countries like China have moved to heavily clamp down on Bitcoin mining and trading activities. In May 2021, the Chinese government declared that all crypto-related transactions are illegal. This was followed by a heavy crackdown on Bitcoin mining operations, forcing many crypto-related businesses to flee to friendlier regions.

Surprisingly, the anti-crypto stance of the Chinese government has done little to stop the industry. According to data by the University of Cambridge, China is now the second-biggest contributor to Bitcoin's global hash rate, only behind the United States.

How Much Is Bitcoin?
The current valuation of Bitcoin is constantly moving, all day every day. It is a truly global asset. From a start of under one cent per coin, BTC has risen in price by thousands of percent to the numbers you see above. The prices of all cryptocurrencies are quite volatile, meaning that anyone’s understanding of how much Bitcoin is will change by the minute. However, there are times when different countries and exchanges show different prices and understanding how much Bitcoin is will be a function of a person’s location.

Where Can You Buy Bitcoin (BTC)?
Bitcoin is, in many regards, almost synonymous with cryptocurrency, which means that you can buy Bitcoin on virtually every crypto exchange — both for fiat money and other cryptocurrencies. Some of the main markets where BTC trading is available are:

Binance
Coinbase Pro
OKEx
Kraken
Huobi Global
Bitfinex
If you are new to crypto, use CoinMarketCap’s own educational portal — Alexandria — to learn how to start buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

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The Bitcoin price is $28,366.16, a change of 4.77% over the past 24 hours as of 3:05 p.m. The recent price action in Bitcoin left the tokens market capitalization at $548,096,094,574.02. So far this year, Bitcoin has a change of 71.44%. Bitcoin is classified as a Currency under CoinDesks Digital Asset Classification Standard (DACS).

Bitcoin is the world’s first decentralized cryptocurrency – a type of digital asset that uses public-key cryptography to record, sign and send transactions over the Bitcoin blockchain – all done without the oversight of a central authority.
The Bitcoin network (with an upper-case “B”) was launched in January 2009 by an anonymous computer programmer or group of programmers under the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto.” The network is a peer-to-peer electronic payment system that uses a cryptocurrency called bitcoin (lower case “b”) to transfer value over the internet or act as a store of value like gold and silver.
Each bitcoin is made up of 100 million satoshis (the smallest units of bitcoin), making individual bitcoin divisible up to eight decimal places. That means anyone can purchase a fraction of a bitcoin with as little as one U.S. dollar.
Bitcoin price
Bitcoin’s price is renowned for being highly volatile, but despite that, it has become the top performing asset of any class (including stocks, commodities and bonds) over the past decade – climbing a staggering 9,000,000% between 2010 and 2020.
When the cryptocurrency was launched at the beginning of 2009, as Satoshi Nakamoto mined the bitcoin genesis block (the first-ever block on the Bitcoin blockchain), 50 BTC entered circulation at a price of $0.00.
Fifty bitcoin continued to enter circulation every block (created once every 10 minutes) until the first halving event took place in November 2012 (see below). Halvings refer to bitcoin’s issuance system, which was programmed into Bitcoin’s code by Satoshi Nakamoto. It essentially involves automatically halving the number of new BTC entering circulation every 210,000 blocks.
In February 2011, BTC’s price reached parity with the U.S dollar for the first time. The milestone encouraged new investors into the market, and over the next four months, bitcoin’s price continued to rise – peaking at over $30.
By early 2013, the leading cryptocurrency had recovered from a prolonged bearish episode and rose above $1,000, albeit only briefly. But with the infamous Mt Gox hack, China announcing its first ban on crypto and other situations, it took a further four years for the BTC price to return to above $1,000 again. Once that level was passed, however, bitcoin’s price continued to surge dramatically throughout 2017 until BTC peaked at its previous long-standing all-time high of $19,850.
Over 2018, the entire crypto market plunged into what is now known as the “crypto winter” – a yearlong bear market. It wasn’t until December 2020, when bitcoin returned to test the previous all-time high, that it eventually surpassed that historical level and rose a further 239% over the next 119 days to a new all-time high of $64,799.
How does Bitcoin work?
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are like the email of the financial world. The currency doesn’t exist in a physical form, and the coin is transacted directly between the sender and the receiver without banking intermediaries to facilitate the transaction. Everything is done publicly through a transparent, immutable, distributed ledger technology called blockchain.
Here are the main features of blockchain technology:
Bitcoin transactions are recorded on a public, distributed ledger known as a “blockchain” that anyone can download and help maintain.
Transactions are sent directly from the sender to the receiver without any intermediaries.
Holders who store their own bitcoin have complete control over it. It cannot be accessed without the holder’s cryptographic key.
Bitcoin doesn’t exist in a physical form.
Bitcoin has a fixed supply of 21 million. No more bitcoin can be created and units of bitcoin cannot be destroyed.
Bitcoin users send and receive coins over the network by inputting the public-key information attached to each person’s digital wallet.
In order to incentivize the distributed network of people verifying bitcoin transactions (miners), a fee is attached to each transaction. The fee is awarded to whichever miner adds the transaction to a new block. Fees work on a first-price auction system, where the higher the fee attached to the transaction, the more likely a miner will process that transaction first.
Every single bitcoin transaction that takes place has to be permanently committed to the Bitcoin blockchain ledger through a process called “mining.” Bitcoin mining refers to the process where miners compete using specialized computer equipment known as application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips to unlock the next block in the chain.
Unlocking blocks work as follows:
Crypto mining uses a system called cryptographic hashing. This function simply takes any input (messages, words or data of any kind) and turns it into a fixed-length alphanumeric code known as a “hash.”
Each input creates a completely unique hash, and it’s almost impossible to predict what inputs will create certain hashes. Even changing one character of the input will result in a totally different fixed-length code.
Each new block has a value called a “target hash.” In order to win the right to fill the next block, miners need to produce a hash that is lower than or equal to the numeric value of the ‘target’ hash. Since hashes are completely random, it’s just a matter of trial and error until one miner is successful.
This method of requiring miners to use machines and spend time and energy trying to achieve something is known as a proof-of-work system and is designed to deter malicious agents from spamming or disrupting the network.
Whoever successfully unlocks the next block is rewarded with a set number of bitcoin known as “block rewards” and gets to add a number of transactions to the new block. They also earn any transaction fees attached to the transactions they add to the new block. A new block is discovered roughly once every 10 minutes.
Bitcoin block rewards decrease over time. Every 210,000 blocks, or about once every four years, the number of bitcoin received from each block reward is halved to gradually reduce the number of bitcoin entering the space over time. As of 2021, miners receive 6.25 bitcoins each time they mine a new block. The next bitcoin halving is expected to occur in 2024 and will see bitcoin block rewards drop to 3.125 bitcoins per block. As the supply of new bitcoin entering the market gets smaller, it will make buying bitcoin more competitive – assuming demand for bitcoin remains high.
Bitcoin’s energy consumption
The process of requiring network contributors to dedicate time and resources to creating new blocks ensures the network remains secure. But that security comes at a price. As of 2021, the Bitcoin network consumes about 93 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year – around the same energy consumed by the 34th-largest country in the world.
This appetite for electricity has drawn widespread criticism from celebrities such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk to government bodies such as China’s State Council and the U.S. Senate over Bitcoin’s impact on climate change. But while the electricity figures are alarmingly high, it’s important to note that bitcoin mining at most accounts for 1.29% of any single country’s energy consumption. Not to mention, Bitcoin is a complete financial system whose energy consumption can be measured and tracked, unlike the fiat system, which cannot be accurately measured and requires a range of additional layers to function, including ATMs, card machines, bank branches, security vehicles, storage facilities and huge data centers.
There are also a number of initiatives including the Crypto Climate Accord and the Bitcoin Mining Council that aim to improve Bitcoin’s carbon footprint by encouraging miners to use renewable sources of energy.
Management
As already mentioned, the Bitcoin network was created by a pseudonymous programmer, or group of programmers, known only as “Satoshi Nakamoto.” During its early development, other developers joined to work on the protocol, including cypherpunk Hal Finney, cryptographers Wei Dai and Nick Szabo and software developer Gavin Andresen.
There were also a range of other developers including Pieter Wuille and Peter Todd who contributed to the development of Bitcoin Core – the first client on the Bitcoin network. A client is a piece of software that enables a network participant to run a node and connect to the blockchain.
An American nonprofit called the Bitcoin Foundation was founded in 2012 to support the development and adoption of the Bitcoin protocol. After three years, however, the foundation eventually ran out of cash and was dissolved.
In 2014, Adam Back, another cypherpunk and the inventor of Hashcash – a cryptographic hashing algorithm created in 1997 which used the same proof-of-work mechanism that Bitcoin would later adopt – co-founded Blockstream. Blockstream is a for-profit tech company that develops new infrastructure on the Bitcoin network, including Lightning Network and sidechains.

Bitcoin Price Gains Momentum as ‘Store of Value’ Amidst Banking Turmoil
Bitcoin’s rally is being fuelled by spot buys, with the majority of flow coming from large market players looking to position in anticipation of a flight to safety

BY
SEBASTIAN SINCLAIR
/
MARCH 20, 2023 02:58 PM
article-image
Source: Shutterstock / Billion Photos, modified by Blockworks

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As central banks continue to struggle with economic uncertainty amid concerns of hyperinflation, investors are turning to digital assets to protect their wealth.

Bellwether bitcoin (BTC) climbed to its highest level in nine months, just above $28,400, on Sunday — representing a 69% increase on a year-to-date basis.

Price action is being driven by spot buys which is positive for the health of the trend, with the market yet to see froth and euphoria in capital allocation, Kurt Grumelart, a trader at Zerocap told Blockworks.

“The majority of this flow is hedge funds and other large market players positioning themselves in anticipation of a flight to safety more so than the actual flight to safety itself.”

Despite this, a comparison to global markets over the last two weeks shows that bitcoin is being actively considered as a risk hedge alongside and, potentially, instead of gold by serious players, Grumelart added.

By comparison, traditional markets have fared much worse, impressing long time crypto market watchers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which measures the performance of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Nasdaq, is down about 3.8% for the year.

US oil, as reflected by the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil index, has also performed poorly, posting a more than 13% loss over the same period. Meanwhile, gold — often considered a hedge against inflation and market uncertainty — is up around 9% year-to-date.

Bitcoin’s recent outperformance can be attributed to a number of factors, including the narrative of store-of-value, which has returned to prominence despite its past inability to perform that role in practice.

Grumelart pointed to bitcoin’s storied origins in the 2008 financial crisis, as a tool to combat negligence within the existing financial system, and said the current economic climate marked “a perfect storm” for bitcoin to prove its worth.

That climate is the culmination of a series of spectacular bank failures in the US and abroad which threatened to boil over this month, prompting regulators to step in and provide a backstop for depositors.

After the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and the FDIC shut down of Signature Bank, First Republic Bank was also propped up by a private sector rescue and banks drew on nearly $12 billion of loans from the US Federal Reserve’s new emergency lending program.

And on Sundsy, Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse was saved from collapse by a takeover from rival UBS in a $3.25 billion deal.

Short-term liquidity boost is bitcoin’s gain
In total, nearly $300 billion has been supplied via expansion of the US Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, including of a record $153 billion drawn from the Fed’s discount window.

All eyes are now locked on the outcome of the next FOMC meeting on Wednesday where the Fed will decide either to scale back its campaign of increased rate hikes, designed to combat inflation, or continue business as usual which has contributed to the breaking of the US retail banking sector.

“A number of central banks are stuck between a rock and a hard place, they simply cannot afford to let the banking sector collapse,” Grumelart said. “While the liquidity spike is positive for all assets, the implications of the action just taken are still unknown.”

The correlation between bitcoin and equities has been largely influenced by the perception the crypto industry, until the recent crisis, served as a risk-on indicator that was closely connected to the economic performance and monetary policies of the US and global markets.

While financial companies have been struggling, the tech sector has been resilient, with the Nasdaq Composite up over 4% and the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund up about 17% for the year.

Tesla and Nvidia, up 67% and 79% YTD respectively, have their own unique drivers that have propelled their prices in recent months, Grumelart said. High-beta risk assets are primarily affected by market liquidity and risk appetite, leading to periods of correlation.

Although many risk assets have seen short-term gains, should economic conditions continue to deteriorate, high-growth equities are expected to suffer. But Grumelart is looking for bitcoin to decouple from Big Tech and follow commodities instead.

“If inflation reaches a double peak, it is likely that most high-performing assets, with the exception of commodities and bitcoin, will reverse most of their gains for the year,” he said. “The world should be glad that we have bitcoin as an option to protect our wealth in moments like this.”

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Turmoil in the banking sector, hotter-than expected inflation data, and renewed hopes for a dovish Federal Reserve has Bitcoin reaching levels not seen in about nine months.

The largest digital asset topped $28,000 for the first time since June 2022, trading for as much as $28,258 on Sunday. Since the start of the year, Bitcoin’s price has risen almost 70%. Other digital assets rallied as well — with Ethereum up about 17% since the start of last week and so-called altcoins like Solana and Cardano advancing, too.
Traders waded high levels of uncertainty last week in markets. US two-year yields fluctuated wildly, and the Cboe Volatility Index, the so-called fear gauge also known as the VIX, spiked above 30. But Bitcoin kept steadfast — and straight up.

“Bitcoin is correlated with liquidity conditions and real rates. Real rates have declined, liquidity conditions have expanded, and it looks as if we’re entering a new regime,” said Ilan Solot, co-head of digital assets at Marex.