Bitcoin excels in hunt for returns
The cryptocurrency is easy to invest in and transactions are on the rise
Bitcoin pundits say 2017 will be another strong year for the cryptocurrency, which posted dollar returns of 129% in 2016, as the hunt for alternative asset classes and institutional money boosts its value. In rand terms, the price of one bitcoin nearly doubled, from R7,307 on January 1 2016 to R14,443 on January 1 2017. An investment in the JSE’s top 40 would have yielded a negative return, while the S&P 500 returned 9.5%. A $1,000 investment into bitcoin at the start of 2011 would today be worth more than $1m, according to a research paper by Coinbase and ARK Invest, which in 2015 became the first public fund manager to offer exchange-traded funds with bitcoin exposure. "Bitcoin is just too big and too important to ignore. At the very least, it should be a small percentage of everyone’s portfolio," said Werner van Rooyen, head of marketing at Luno (formerly BitX), Africa’s first and largest bitcoin marketplace. Bitcoin’s stellar performance in recent years, which was uncorrelated t...
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