Amid the price decline of bitcoin from $10,000 at the start of September to around $8,000 today, investors are looking at the stock market and asking themselves, is bitcoin really the better investment?

The answer: Yes. 

Our Blockchain Believers Portfolio, which we created one year ago -- after I outlined the investing strategies in my book Blockchain For Everyone -- is still outperforming the “Non-Believers Portfolio,” which consists of stocks and bonds. (Read more about the three portfolios.)

In plain English, this means that the investor who has held just a little bit of bitcoin (the “Baby Believer”) or just a little more of the top three altcoins (“Big Believers”) has significantly outperformed the stock market:

The Non-Believers (stocks and bonds only) are earning 3.22%. Here’s a funny coincidence: the average U.S. long-term inflation rate is 3.22%, which means the Non-Believers are just keeping up with inflation. Traditional investors are not making any money.

Enter bitcoin. It’s the only thing that’s saving savvy investors: even Ethereum and Ripple are down from last year. A modest amount of bitcoin in an investor’s portfolio -- between 2 and 10 percent -- has outrun inflation, and outperformed the stock market.

Early on, I had a hypothesis: as the stock market went down, we’d see the price of bitcoin go up (and vice versa). As investors fled the market, in other words, they would flock to alternative investments like gold and bitcoin.

Here are charts showing the stock market, and the price of bitcoin, over the past year. Use your pattern recognition to see if you can spot any correlation:

Price of one “share” of the entire stock market (source: Yahoo Finance).

Price of one bitcoin (source: Yahoo Finance).

It’s hard to see much correlation between the two. So I’m revising this hypothesis to simply state that bitcoin is its own thing. It marches to its own beat.

The bigger question is, why hasn’t the stock market moved over the past year?

Two words: political turmoil.

Keeping in mind that markets are complex and have many causes, think of all the global uncertainty from the Hong Kong protests, to the challenge of Brexit, to threat of U.S. presidential impeachment.

Let’s imagine you’re the leader of a U.S. company with factories in China, and you’re thinking of moving them to Mexico. You’d think, “But I don’t know what the U.S. policy will be toward either China or Mexico in the future, or even who will be in office. So why invest in the future? Let’s wait and see.”

Wait and see. Like the awkward teenager who never gets up the courage to ask out a crush, the opportunities slip by. No risk, but no reward. No challenges, but no growth. All this political uncertainty breeds business uncertainty, and the stock market just manages to keep up with inflation.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, is full of risk -- but with increased risk often comes increased reward. And by risking just a little bit of their overall portfolio, investors have been able to claim outsized rewards.

Once again, the Blockchain Believer strategy:

In times of uncertainty, one thing is certain: there are always opportunities.

Bitcoin trading requires tools if you want to be effective and successful. These tools run the gamut from charting software to trading algorithms and trading bots and even to portfolio management. Because everyone is different, traders are all different too. And we all have our favorites, whether you're talking trading stocks or bitcoin. That had us wondering which bitcoin trading tools might be the most popular among our readers, which brings us to this week's poll question.

What is your favorite bitcoin trading tool?

This week's survey.

How many people use bitcoin? It is hard to say, but there are a few data points that provide some tantalizing clues. This article from BMJ editor Alex Lielacher gives you some details regarding bitcoin uses, and despite the limited data and the impossibility of accurately determining the number of bitcoin users around the world, he gives us a rough estimate of the number of global bitcoin users.

Facebook’s new cryptocurrency is called Libra, after the Roman unit of measurement used to mint coins. For blockchain investors, this is huge news. Talk about widespread adoption! Facebook’s reach is so vast that Libra may become a new global currency overnight, on par with the dollar and the euro. Here's what we know and some guidelines on how to invest in the soon to be launched altcoin.

If you’re new to investing in the world of bitcoin, this page is your quick-start guide. We’ll explain what you need to know, using simple analogies, so you confidently explain bitcoin to your friends and colleagues. Here at BMJ, our goal is to make bitcoin accessible to all investors, so you can make great investing decisions and become healthy, wealthy, and wise.

According to a letter written by European Central Bank president Mario Draghi, the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) is monitoring developments in the financial sector, and apparently has an open-minded approach to new technologies that align with its purposes. Draghi notes that digital assets and stablecoins are currently under investigation for their potential in “monetary policy, the safety and efficiency of payments and market infrastructures and the stability of the financial system.” 

A crypto entrepreneur is proposing a new definition for understanding ether, the native asset of Ethereum, which he calls, “the best model for money the world has ever seen.” Unlike financial services and products that operate below central banks, ether generates permissionless financial activities on Ethereum, continuously shifting power and control away from the centuries-old banking system toward a technologically advanced, open and new finance movement.

The German bank BayernLB has published a report on bitcoin versus gold, in which it predicts a big leap for the cryptocurrency in 2020. On October 1, the Munich-based, state-owned bank published its latest research report that seems to suggest that the forthcoming Bitcoin halving effect is yet to be factored into its current price of about $8,300.