Bitcoin is the best-performing major asset of 2020

As bitcoin’s price grinds toward $10,000, its performance over a much longer timescale reached a significant milestone this month.

While most traders focus on bitcoin’s spot price, zooming out on a more extended timeframe reveals a bullish trend for the cryptocurrency. As Twitter user The Moon points out, bitcoin’s one-year average price just reached an all-time high.

Based on The Moon’s analysis, bitcoin’s 365-day moving average has crossed $9,531.

This time last year, BTC was in the middle of a parabolic move that would eventually take the price to a high near $14,000 in late June.

Then, just a few months ago, BTC crashed below $4,000 in a mass coronavirus-driven liquidation event. Neither the upper end or lower band of the yearly price range has been reached since.

Bitcoin’s quadrennial halving came and went on May 11, producing the third “quantitative hardening” for the blockchain network. Post-halving, bitcoin miners now receive 6.25 BTC per block rather than the 12.5 BTC they’ve grown accustomed to over the past four years.

With bitcoin’s inflation rate cut in half, proponents believe the digital asset will become scarcer and thus more valuable. If history is any indication, they’re probably right.

Although bitcoin’s price tends to fall after the halving, the supply cut is a significant tailwind over the next six-to-twelve months. Bullish expectations are magnified by the number of new users joining the network and the percentage holders who are simply accumulating and not moving their BTC.

Data from Glassnode suggest bitcoin holders are taking matters into their own hands by moving BTC out of exchanges and, possibly, into hardware wallets. Bitcoin’s daily active addresses and new addresses are also on the rise.

The bitcoin price has rallied more than 12% since the halving took place on Monday. Year-to-date, the price is up roughly 37%, making BTC the best-performing major asset of 2020. By comparison, spot gold is up 14.2% over the same period.

The Bitcoin Price Just Shattered a New All-Time High – Just Not the One You Think, CCN, May 15