The growth by leaps and bounds of bitcoin has led a number of investors to kick themselves when told how much they could have made off the cryptocurrency if they bought it at the start. Just to be clear, if you bought $100 U.S. worth of bitcoin in 2010 when it was worth 0.003 cents each, you'd be sitting on over $88 million.
It all sounds so easy. But for regular investors in bitcoin – those not heavily involved in the cryptocurrency world – bitcoin has often got a confusing reputation. It's known to be highly volatile with wild price swings, but at the same time, some have gone so far as to call it a safe-haven asset
To be sure, bitcoin has got a touch of support when politics were rocky. However, a comparison on bitcoin's performance over the past year against the NASDAQ Composite Index – a tech-heavy stock index – and the typical safe-have asset of gold, shows that the cryptocurrency has more in common with the former.
From around mid-June of 2016, both bitcoin and the NASDAQ have been on a steady climb higher with the stock index recently breaking the 6,000-point barrier and continuing to hit fresh record highs. And it appears there isn't a day that goes by where bitcoin doesn't hit a fresh record high.
A look at bitcoin's trading pattern versus gold in the last year also gives a glimpse into how the cryptocurrency isn't really a safe haven asset. Gold saw a lot of support between mid-June of 2016 and the middle of October. Bitcoin was just bubbling along quietly.
But once Donald Trump was elected president stateside, investors moved out of gold into riskier assets on the promise that increased spending by the new U.S administration as well as tax reform could boost stocks. At the time the gold price continued to decline, bitcoin rose, and while the precious metal saw a bit of renewed support in the first few months, the cryptocurrency continues to skyrocket.
