When the coronavirus pandemic hit all financial markets, including gold, stocks and currencies, in the middle of March, the cryptocurrency industry shed $145bn in market capitalisation.
 
It fell from $264bn on March 7th to $145bn on March 13th. 
 
However, most major cryptocurrencies began with early signs of recovery after so-called Black Thursday amid the Covid-19 crash.
 
The total cryptocurrency market cap gained almost 80% after a drop off in March, reaching over $259bn value at the end of the last week, according to InsideBitcoins.
 
Indeed, Bitcoin, the world’s biggest digital currency, has now outperformed all other major asset classes over the past year.
 
In Delphi Digital’s weekly market commentary, analyst Kevin Kelly pointes out that, Bitcoin is currently up around 40% over the past 12 months.

“There are a handful of asset classes boasting positive returns this year and crypto is one of them,” wrote Kelly in the report. 

“Bitcoin’s latest rebound pushed its year-to-date return back into the black as investors continue to digest countless headlines surrounding monetary and fiscal policy responses to COVID-19. We often remind ourselves to take a step back as arbitrary time horizons can muddy or even mislead investors. With that being said, we’d like to quickly point out that bitcoin’s outperforming just about every major asset class over the last 12 months (+40%) despite its most recent +50% drawdown. Again, time horizons matter.”
 
However, it was Ethereum, not its main rival Bitcoin, was the most-traded cryptocurrency in the first quarter of 2020, with 753.5 thousand transactions per day, according to CoinMetrics data.