Bitcoin has extended its rally on Friday, rising to the loftiest level since May 2022, pushing its yearly gain up to over 130%, on pace to be one of the best performing assets this year.
The crypto
BTCUSD,
rose about 2.5% over the past 24 hours to around $38,676 Friday afternoon, as excitement about the potential approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds continues to build. Bitcoin is still 44% down from its all-time high in 2021.
Risk assets in general performed well in November, as concerns eased around several pressure points, including the surge in long-term Treasury yields and inflation, analysts at Grayscale Research wrote in a Friday note.
Despite outperforming many major assets year-to-date, bitcoin underperformed long-term Treasurys and the S&P 500 in November on a volatility-adjusted basis, gaining 9% for the month.
![](https://crypto-chat.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Bitcoin-is-up-130-this-year-Could-it-extend-the.png)
Bloomberg; Grayscale Investments
Sam Callahan, market analyst at Swan Bitcoin, said he expects bitcoin to trade between $36,000 and $40,000 by the end of the year, “provided that the macroeconomic environment doesn’t take a turn for the worse, and barring any significant positive development, such as the approval of a Spot Bitcoin ETF or the adoption of Bitcoin by a major corporation, sovereign-wealth fund, or nation-state.”
Despite bitcoin’s rally so far this year, December has historically been a particularly volatile month for the crypto, since it was created in 2009. It rose seven out of 13 times in December, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
In years when bitcoin gained more than 100% through November, the digital asset saw an average gain of 20% in December, rising four of the six times it occurred, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
To be sure, bitcoin has a relatively short history and was particularly volatile during its early years.