- JPMorgan looked at the top cryptocurrency’s performance in April.
- Bitcoin outperformed gold over the past year.
Things are looking good for Bitcoin.
It’s a sharp reversal from a few months ago, when Bitcoin was trading around $80,000. JPMorgan examined Bitcoin’s strong price performance through April, which seems to only be accelerating in May.
It was a brutal few weeks after US President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping tariffs and triggered fears of a global trade war, which weighed on global markets.
Trump touted pro-crypto policies, but failed to create an uptick in crypto prices or regulatory change in his first 100 days in office, JPMorgan wrote in a May 14 note.
Still, pessimism eased as Trump backed down on trade, and amid more signs of global crypto adoption from corporates and countries.
“The bull case for Bitcoin has never been stronger,” tweeted David Marcus, a former PayPal executive and a prominent Bitcoin backer, on May 10. “Buckle up.”
The top cryptocurrency is up 10% since the beginning of May and trading at $103,500.
JPMorgan highlighted six charts to outline its recovery.
Bitcoin’s big value
Bitcoin’s slump at the beginning of the year has now reversed, with inflows to exchange-traded products, including Bitcoin ETFs issued by BlackRock and Fidelity, flipping positive to post their best month since January.
BlackRock’s IBIT was the largest gainer by far in April. The fund took in 84% of the total flows to Bitcoin ETFs, which totalled $3 billion in April, JPMorgan wrote.
The overall Bitcoin ETF market is dominated by BlackRock’s IBIT, which has a 52% market share, according to Dune Analytics.
Bitcoin ETFs have drawn in a combined $96 billion since their 2024 launch, according to DefiLlama, By comparison, Ethereum ETFs have $5 billion in assets under management.
Bitcoin value ‘regains ground’
Trump’s tariff tumult defined April, which sent markets reeling before recent pauses and deals helped prices recover.
The tech-stacked Nasdaq, which Bitcoin historically tracks, spent a majority of April about 15% lower than its level on the day of Trump’s inauguration in January.
It’s since recovered, as Bitcoin has now thundered past $100,000.
Much of Bitcoin’s gains were “largely concentrated in the final week of the month,” JPMorgan wrote.
Comparison to gold
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink who have touted Bitcoin’s potential as is a safe haven asset like gold.
So far, that potential hasn’t manifested, JPMorgan found.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has grown less volatile. JPMorgan notes that 30-day volatility for both Bitcoin and gold have fallen in tandem, according to CoinGlass.
And JPMorgan found that when Bitcoin is normalised — when the values of two or more assets are made equal at the beginning of a defined time period, as in the chart below, in order to compare performance — against the precious metal, Bitcoin’s up 15% against gold’s 5% at the end of March.
Crypto stocks soar
Publicly traded crypto firms have seen their market cap contract 34% from a post-election all-time high of nearly $120 billion in November 2024 to $76 billion at the end of April.
April brought with it the silver lining of a 19% month-over-month increase in overall market cap.
Galaxy, which announced plans to go public in the US in April, was the biggest gainer in market cap growing 45% through the month, JPMorgan wrote.
This week, news broke that Coinbase will be included in the S&P 500 from May 19. The news catapulted its stock 16% higher and, per JPMorgan, the company’s overall market cap rose 18% month-over-month.
Andrew Flanagan is a markets correspondent for DL News. Have a tip? Reach out to aflanagan@dlnews.com.
