It's Official: Bitcoin Was The Top Performing Currency Of 2015

For most investors, the major story of 2015 was the expectation and eventual fulfillment of a rate hike, signalling the start of tightening monetary policy in the United States. This policy is divergent to those of other major central banks, and this has translated into considerable strength and momentum for the U.S. dollar.

Using the benchmark of the U.S. Dollar Index, a comparison against a basket of major currencies, the dollar gained 8.3% throughout the year.

Despite this strength, the best performing currency in 2015 was not the dollar. In fact, the top currency of 2015 is likely to be considered the furthest thing from the greenback.

Bitcoin, a digital and decentralized cryptocurrency, staged a late comeback in 2015 to overtake the dollar by a whopping 35% by the end of the year.

Courtesy of: The Money Project

Bitcoin is no stranger to extremes. During the year it came into the mainstream in 2013, Bitcoin gained 5,429% to easily surpass all other currencies in gains. However, the following year it would become a dog, losing -56% of its value to become the world’s worst performing currency in 2014.

The second best performing major currency, relative to the USD, was the Israeli shekel. It gained 0.3% throughout the year, and the Japanese yen (0%) and Swiss franc (0%) were close behind, finishing on par with how they started the year.

The world’s worst performing currencies are from countries that were battered by commodities or geopolitical strife.

Ukraine’s hryvnia fell -33.8% in the aftermath of Crimea. Brazil’s real (-30.5%), the Canadian dollar (-15.9%), Russian ruble (-20.8%), and South African rand (-26.7%) all lost significant value in the purging of global commodities. Gold finished the year down -10%, and silver at -11%.

And as China devaluation accelerates, Bitcoin has been surging since the start of the year...

Comments

[MoHillbilly]

I realize I know nothing and will surely suffer the "slings and arrows" but I have a question.

If Gov.s can create dollars out of thin air why can't people with the tech skill or powerful resources do the same with BitCoin? Agian I know I'm a idiot on this but it seems anything digital can and will be manipulated

[Pseudonymous]

Well, if you have just the right tech skill and powerful resources (in this case, purpose-built hardware, a.k.a. bitcoin mining equipment plus electric energy to power it) you can create bitcoins in a fair competition with everyone else who is doing exactly the same thing, according to protocol (called bitcoin mining). So if you use those skills and resources then it is not "out of thin air", is it? It is out of skills and resources!

If you want to know all the assumptions and caveats and why, given those assumptions, you can't create bitcoins with any less resources than that, then you need to research bitcoin. It is interesting, but this is as much explanation as I have time for now.

[BadLibertarian]

The 'thin air' problem for digital assets is why mining and 'Nakamoto consensus' are important features of cryptocurrencies. Issuance is capped in the software at 21 million total coins, and the mining process (which accounts for the self interest of miners) is what keeps the system honest.

There's nothing stopping a miner from changing the source code on their nodes to award them one million coins every five minutes - except that other miners, nodes, exchanges, etc. will never accept those coins because they violate the rules of a software protocol that everyone else has a strong interest in upholding. It's sort of a game theory thing - collaboration is more profitable than defection because of the way the rules were set up.

[OutaTime43]

Tulips were the best performing currency in 1637.

[crazytechnician]

Yawn. That's so 2014.