The leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC), has been named the best-performing institutional-grade asset.
To a large extent, the cryptocurrency outperformed global stocks, gold, and other assets. Since the beginning of the year, the market value of the cryptocurrency has been surging. Although BTC retraced to about $51,500 some days after reaching the current all-time high (ATH) of $61,683 on Coinmarketcap, it managed to recover from the drop and traded at $58,166 during the time of writing.
Bitcoin posts a 103% increase in Q1
According to market data from Messari, a cryptocurrency data research platform, Bitcoin is the best performing institutional-grade asset in Q1 of 2021, with about 103 percent gain. Oil was rated as the second-best performing asset as it made a 26 percent increase within the period. Other assets that made a positive return include global stocks (three percent) and the United States dollar (USD), which only gained one percent.
High Yield Bonds and Cash had no significant increase or decreased so far in Q1, according to Messari. Investment Grade Bonds declined by four percent, followed by Government Bonds, which also declined by five percent. Gold had the biggest drop in value within Q1 of 2021. The precious metal dropped by about ten percent in market value.
Institutions are buying BTC
Institutions now have an interest in holding Bitcoin. Over the past year, BTC had no corporate investor, not until MicroStrategy unlocked the path when it bought a huge amount of Bitcoin last year. So far, a number of big-name companies are holding BTC in their balance sheet, including Square, MassMutual, and Galaxy Digital, to name a few. Recently, Tesla cleared the path further after allocating about $1.5 billion in Bitcoin.
