Bitcoin vs. Traditional Assets: How Does Crypto's 10-Year Performance Sync Up?

Bitcoin has been among the most fascinating tradable assets to watch over the last year.

While still difficult to nail down an exact characterization of cryptocurrency and how it fits within the modern financial paradigm - whether a currency, digital asset or a commodity - by evaluating the price action in the context of its more established analogues, it becomes apparent that Bitcoin and its peers have reached significant milestones.

Is the run up really that unprecedented? Or instead, is price performance more of a self-fulfilling prophecy that is bound to experience periods of accumulation, consolidation and distribution akin to rotation evident in other, more established asset classes? We took a side-by-side look to see what types of clues can be gleaned in this historical price context and how Bitcoin stacks up when ranking performance.

Digital goldThe fact that it has existed for 10 years - despite drawing the ire of regulators, experiencing several exchange hacks, and devolving into a scaling stalemate - Bitcoin is a modern marvel.

Investors increasingly choose Bitcoin and crypto over gold in times of turbulence, and Bitcoin transaction volumes recently surpassed gold for the first time ever.

According to the London Bullion Market, gold is anticipated to clear $446 billion in settled OTC trades during 2018 while Bitcoin has already recorded $850 billion in transaction volume this year.

Can crypto sync with tech stocks?Another potential muse for cryptocurrency and Bitcoin could be the tech sector, and it may be an even better control group, given that their utilities align well.

Bitcoin has value individually, but also functions as a gateway for fiat to enter into the greater crypto space.

Bitcoin shares the distinction of mining when comparing how energy products are extracted, thanks to the process of unlocking new coins and appending new blocks to the blockchain.

Looking strictly at a performance perspective despite oil's more practical nature, Bitcoin's longer-term performance casts a long shadow over oil prices during the last five years, when cryptocurrency trading picked up momentum and entered more mainstream discourse.