As East Asia prepares to shut down for the Lunar New Year holiday and looks towards the Year of the Snake, it’s time to look back at bitcoin (BTC) and the CoinDesk 20 (CD20)’s performance during the Year of the Dragon.

Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA has an annual tradition of forecasting the market’s performance in the coming year based on the lunar cycle, and with a few minor tweaks, it’s as applicable to crypto as it is to traditional markets.

Looking back at last year, the market sorcerers were right on the money. Bitcoin is up 137%, while the CoinDesk 20 (CD20), an index tracking the largest digital assets, is up 128% in the last year. This crypto rally is largely thanks to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump last November, which lined up with stargazers’ predictions of volatility, then a rally, in the second half of the year.

The only area where market forecasters missed the mark last year was ether’s (ETH) performance. Citing the then-anticipated ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the Dencun upgrade to the Ethereum protocol, analysts hoped the dragon energy would ignite the market’s second largest digital asset.

But that failed to materialize, and ETH is only up 35% over the last year as it struggled to keep up to the market’s gains.

Now, on to the Year of the Snake. CLSA says the market is bound for some unpredictable twists as assets – both traditional and crypto – make their way through the lunar months.

The year begins with cautious optimism, as liquidity-driven modest gains mirror th

Go to Source to See Full Article
Author: Sam Reynolds