Take the Long View
With the second quarter behind us, we remind investors that tough quarters for bitcoin are not unusual.
Bitcoin lost 41.3% in the three months ending June 30, 2021. While disappointing on the surface, three years ago, re-claiming 2017's parabolic high of nearly $20,000 seemed out of the question for most non-maximalists. At that time, bitcoin ended the second quarter of 2018 at $5,899. Most recently, bitcoin closed Q2 2021 at $34,585 (up 486% over three years). While bitcoin continues to climb a wall of worry, smart investors have taken the long view: despite quarterly fluctuations, the asset has outperformed over longer periods of time.
As of 6/30/2021, bitcoin’s performance on a one, three, and five-year horizon compared to major assets:
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Over the last three-years, bitcoin has gained 486.2%, compared to the S&P 500 at 67.1%, MSCI ACWI at 52.8%, and Barclay's Aggregate at 16.9%. Gold, Bitcoin's store of value competition, has risen 41.3%.
Rolling Returns Illustrate Benefits of Holding
With data going back to 12/31/2011, we assess rolling three-year returns beginning on 12/31/2014. Here, we note that there has only been 26 days out of 2,373 in this period that trailing three-year returns were negative. While the magnitude of three-year returns has fluctuated significantly (the highest being 7367% on 12/31/2014, the lowest being -35.7% on 11/29/2016), bitcoin has had positive returns more often than not (technically, 98.9% of the days).
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This Week On-Chain: Balances on Exchanges
Investors have started to move bitcoin out of exchanges and into cold storage again, as illustrated by the on-chain metric of Balances on Exchanges. The number of bitcoin held on exchanges has reached the lowest level since May 13, a positive on-chain development. Exchange outflows imply that bitcoin owners are moving positions back into cold storage. We note that in the month of May, when bitcoin lost 35.1%, 102k bitcoin were moved to exchanges. Since then, almost 46k have been transferred back into wallet storage.
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Bottom Line
Taking the long view in assessing bitcoin’s one, three, and five-year returns can help investors digest quarterly fluctuations. While bitcoin has lost 30% or more in six quarters so far, bitcoin closed the month of June at $34,585, a price that most never would have imagined just three years ago. Rolling returns illustrate the benefit of holding through volatility, and as we’ve seen on-chain, investors have once again begun to move positions away from exchanges and into storage. With today's institutional adoption and financial integration still in the early innings, we look forward to the coming three years and beyond.
ABOUT EAGLEBROOK ADVISORS
Eaglebrook Advisors provides independent financial advisors with streamlined, secure, and compliant access to bitcoin and digital assets. The firm has created the first bitcoin and digital asset separately managed accounts (SMAs), which are designed to seamlessly integrate with an advisor’s current portfolio management and reporting systems and workflows. Eaglebrook’s investment products allow advisors to directly add bitcoin and other digital assets to model portfolios and include this asset class in their overall asset allocation strategies and in clients’ financial plans.
For more information, please visit www.eaglebrookadvisors.com and follow us on LinkedIn.
