Bitcoin outperforms S&P 500, Nasdaq, gold since the start of Iran war

A bitcoin comeback may be underway.

Just as the cryptocurrency was kicking off its latest winning week, ProShares’ Simeon Hyman was emphasizing a bullish bitcoin trend on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

“If you look at bitcoin, it’s up a little bit and equities are down [since the Iran war began,]” the firm’s global investment strategist said on Monday.” “So, I think the diversification story really holds in in this current environment.”

As of Friday’s market close, bitcoin gained 5% this week — with most of the gains coming over a 24-hour period. Plus, it’s up roughly 8% since the Iran war started on Feb. 28.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 and gold are down more 3% since the war with Iran began, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq is off more than 2%.

ProShares is active in the cryptocurrency space — operating more than a dozen cryptocurrency ETFs. It launched the ProShares CoinDesk 20 Crypto ETF (KRYP) last month. It’s up nearly 5% since the Iran war began, but the fund is off about 7% since its early February debut.

Despite bitcoin’s recent strength, it’s still down more than 40% from its record high of $126,198 reached last October.

Main Management founding partner and CEO Kim Arthur thinks bitcoin is in a classic crypto winter — a so-called phenomenon that tends to happen every four years. According to Arthur, it’s in the bottoming stage.

“Bitcoin was trading at $125,000 five months ago. So, it was down 50-plus percent when this conflict erupted,” he said in the same interview. “I do like the fact that it’s outperformed a lot of other asset classes [since the war,] but… you have to widen the lens a little bit on that.”

Arthur, who has exposure to bitcoin, indicates he’s taking a passive investing approach to the cryptocurrency right now.

“For myself as an asset allocator and a portfolio manager… I look at bitcoin as my benchmark, and then I bench everything else against that,” said Arthur, who added bitcoin has been an extremely difficult master to beat particularly since 2021.

The digital currency has gained about 15% over the past five years.