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In November 2018, legendary investor Gary Shilling criticized bitcoin and said that he’s short on the asset.
Speaking to Business Insider, he described bitcoin as a “black box” and that he is suspicious of assets that are not transparent.
Gary Shilling calls bitcoin a "black box" pic.twitter.com/yPmOw5M0uS
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) December 16, 2019
Since then, the bitcoin price has increased from around $3,200 to over $7,000, by well over two-fold against the USD.
Why bitcoin performs well
The performance of bitcoin is cyclical; it moves based on sentiment and as such, it goes through a cycle composed of a bear market, an accumulation phase, a build phase, and a bull market.
Often, when the bitcoin price reaches the lowest point of a bear market, investors are quick to criticize the dominant cryptocurrency for its declining price.
In doing so, many investors also tend to misdescribe bitcoin’s characteristics to support their arguments by saying it is not transparent and has a lack of clarity regarding its structure.
However, bitcoin technically is a piece of an open source software that is contributed to by developers worldwide. Its code can be viewed by anyone and in that regard, it could be described as the most transparent store of value.
Bitcoin has increased by more than twice since Shilling last criticized it because it was at the bottom of a bear trend at the time.
Source: tradingview.com
What happens during and after a bear trend is that companies within the ecosystem more proactively build better infrastructure to support users and investors.
Since November 2018, a new array of services providers such as Bakkt have emerged and many countries have started to provide more regulatory clarity surrounding cryptocurrencies as an asset class.
How will it continue to do?
Although bitcoin is coming off a strong rally to $13,900 in mid-2019 and is down close to 50 percent within five months, it has still performed relatively well year-to-date.
In the medium to long-term, there are several fundamental catalysts for the bitcoin price such as the upcoming block reward halving in May 2020.
In the short-term, however, technical analysts are weighing towards a deeper pullback amidst falling volumes and interest across major cryptocurrency exchanges.