The bank JPMorgan released a new report in Bloomberg that analyzes the reasons behind bitcoin’s price appreciation. The cryptoasset nearly hit US$ 67,000 on the market recently, registering a new all-time high.
Initially, it was presented that this appreciation happened due to the launch of the first cryptoasset ETF in the United States, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO). However, there are other reasons behind this unexpected rise.
According to JPMorgan, concern about inflation and the failure of gold protection against inflation are responsible for the high appreciation of bitcoin in the market.
JPMorgan strategists note that BITO’s debut on the U.S. stock exchange was not enough to trigger the big appreciation of bitcoin in the week. According to the report, cryptoassets are being presented as a store of value that can protect investment funds from inflation.
“By itself, it is unlikely that the launch of BITO triggered a new phase of significant new capital inflows into Bitcoin. Instead, we believe that the perception of Bitcoin as a better inflation hedge than gold is the main reason for the current rebound, triggering a shift from gold ETFs to Bitcoin funds since September”.
In addition to citing inflation that can severely affect investment earnings, the report talks about gold failing as a store of value against inflation in the financial market.
This failure allowed bitcoin to be chosen as an alternative to the precious metal, attracting investments seeking protection from the high inflation that plagues economies such as Brazil, the United States, which have increased their basic interest rates to contain inflation.
In a chart released in Bloomberg, it is possible to see how bitcoin investment funds grew at the expense of the fall of ETFs representing gold.
For JPMorgan analysts, this flight of investments from gold toward bitcoin is expected to remain until the end of 2021, which may reflect on the cryptoasset’s price performance in the market.
“This flow shift remains intact, supporting a bullish outlook for Bitcoin until year-end”.
