- Bitcoin is up 72% this year.
- Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust and miners are outperforming the asset.
- “I think both have outperformed for slightly different reasons, but underlying this is bullish sentiment towards crypto this year,” Ed Goh, head of trading at market maker B2C2, told DL News.
Happy Wednesday!
Bitcoin trades below its 2021 all-time high, but the world’s leading cryptocurrency has enjoyed some tailwinds. And companies linked to Bitcoin, including Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust and Bitcoin miners, are reaping the rewards.
Let’s take a closer look.
Outperforming Bitcoin
Bitcoin still has a long way to go before it can claw itself back to the $67,500 all-time high recorded in November 2021.
But things are improving. The price of Bitcoin has jumped 72% this year to $28,350.
For comparison, the S&P 500 is up 13%, the Nasdaq 37%, and the Dow Jones 3%.
Associated businesses and products — such as asset manager Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust, or GBTC, and a number of publicly-traded Bitcoin mining companies — have also seen their numbers grow this year, even outperforming Bitcoin itself.
“I think both have outperformed for slightly different reasons, but underlying this is bullish sentiment towards crypto this year,” Ed Goh, head of trading at market maker B2C2, told DL News.
Looking at Grayscale’s investment product GBTC, which enables institutional investors to bet on Bitcoin without having to buy the digital asset itself, is up 169% since the beginning of 2023, according to TradingView.
Last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s deadline to appeal a recent court ruling came and went without the regulator appealing it.
The ruling saw the court reject the SEC’s decision to not allow Grayscale to convert a Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund into a Bitcoin spot ETF.
Meanwhile, shares for Bitcoin mining companies have also grown. Riot is up 177% year-to-date, while Marathon is up 136%, Hut has risen 8 125%, and Hive has jumped 108%, according to TradingView.
“Miners have outperformed based on bullish BTC sentiment and price move,” said Goh, adding that miners were “inherently leveraged long BTC spot price as that is the product.”
More market moves are to be expected, with JPMorgan noting in a report last week, “The Bitcoin mining industry is at a crucible moment as management teams (and investors) weigh the prospects of a Bitcoin ETF, which may catalyze a rally, against record hashrate increases and the looming block reward halving that threaten industry revenues and profitability.”
“We think discipline and timing are paramount and favor operators that offer the best relative value in light of their existing hashrate, operational efficiency, power contracts, funded growth plans and liquidity,” the report stated.
Crypto market movers
- Bitcoin was flat over the last 24 hours and continues trading for $28,350.
- Ethereum has also not bulged, and is currently priced at $1,570.
What we’re reading
- Binance users pull more than $500m in October amid regulatory woes — DL News
- Fantom Foundation confirms $550,000 stolen from one of its wallets — DL News
Tom Carreras is a Markets Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Reach out at tcarreras@dlnews.com