After a highly volatile three-month period for bitcoin, the asset has just closed its worst quarter since the bear market of 2018, and its third-worst quarter since 2014, in terms of USD performance. The cryptocurrency lost more than 41% of value in this period, despite surging to an all-time high of $65,000 in mid-April. Despite the data, Bitcoin is still up roughly 20% year to date.
The second quarter of 2021, which opened at $58,789 (April 1, according to Bitstamp), ended at $35,037, decreasing approximately 40.5%. The volatility was even greater, whereas Bitcoin’s Q2 highest was the ATH at $64.89K, and the quarter’s low reached $28,600 just 8 days ago.
As reported earlier this year, Q2 is historically been one of the best quarters for BTC, with an average ROI of 60%. The situation this year seemed even more bullish as BTC entered April following its best Q1, where its USD price had skyrocketed by more than 100%.
And it all started rather well. In the first few weeks of April, bitcoin continued the bullish trend, which culminated in the middle of the month (April 14, 2021) when the asset peaked at almost $65,000 to set its current all-time high.
But then it all changed as BTC retraced by several thousand dollars and dipped below $60,000. Numerous reports emerged indicating that institutional interest, which was the driving force of the rally so far, has declined.
The landscape worsened in mid-May as Elon Musk’s Tesla disabled bitcoin payments for its products, citing environmental issues. After the immediate price dump, China joined the pack, reiterated its old ban on BTC, and even went after miners.
The FUD and overly-leveraged positions drove the primary cryptocurrency south hard, and bitcoin plummeted to $30,000 days later. This meant a 54% decline in a month after the peak, which made May bitcoin’s second-worst trading month.
Despite bouncing off and attempting to overcome $40,000 on several occasions, BTC failed to recover most of its losses in June either. In fact, it even dipped below $30,000 for the first time since January.
Although it’s currently trading at just shy of $34,000 – meaning a 25% increase since its June low – the asset is still far away from its Q2 2021 entry price. It’s actually over 40% down during this three-month period, which makes it the third-worst quarter since 2014 and worst quarter since Q4, 2018, which ended a year-long bear market.
Losing 40% of value over the quarter doesn’t speak well for the 2020/2021 bull market in which the cryptocurrency was (is?) in since late last year. Given the fact that the worst trading quarter overall, Q1 2018, when it plummeted by 50%, marked the start of a year-long bear market, it’s reasonable to question in which state the cryptocurrency is now.
CryptoPotato recently reached out to several analysts and long-term proponents to review whether or not they believe the bull market is over. While some, like Max Keiser, said they have been through worse corrections and further reasserted their belief in BTC’s value appreciation, others weren’t so optimistic as the aforementioned 50% decline could not be easily ignored.
Looking on a more macro scale, though, bitcoin is still roughly 20% up since the start of the year. Furthermore, it’s 350% higher than January 1st, 2020, and has marked a mindblowing 800% ROI since the most violent day of the COVID-19-induced market crash in March last year.
