Bitcoin Reclaims $51,000 Level, Becomes 2021's Top Performing Asset Class

Bitcoin's BTC/USD strong recovery over the course of the third quarter has made it the best performing asset year-to-date.

What Happened: The market-leading cryptocurrency hit an intra-day high of $50,327 on Tuesday, extending a seven-day rally that saw its value increase by over 20%.

In the last 24 hours alone, Bitcoin added $2,000 to its price with a daily trading volume of $35 billion. The crypto trades around $51,350 at publication time.

According to data from Bitcoin financial services firm NYDIG, Bitcoin investors are up 49.1% on their investment since the start of the year. The digital asset beat out traditional asset classes like stocks, commodities, and REITs to become 2021’s best-performing asset.

See Also: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin On A Bull Run As SEC Confirms It Has No China-Like Plans To Ban Crypto

Why It's Important: It's likely Bitcoin’s recent rally wasn’t solely driven by retail investors. A report from CoinShares, tracking the weekly flow of digital asset funds, revealed that Bitcoin investment products saw $69 million inflows in the last week.

“We believe this decisive turnaround in sentiment is due to growing confidence in the asset class amongst investors and more accommodative statements from the US Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve,” according to CoinShares.

Ethereum ETH/USD, the second-largest crypto by market cap, recorded $20 million in inflows in the last week, conceding some of its market share to Bitcoin.

Altcoins like Cardano ADA/USD and Solana SOL/USD saw only minor inflows totaling $1.1 million and $0.7 million and respectively.

Photo: André François McKenzie on Unsplash