Data from BarclayHedge, a firm serving institutional clients in the field of hedge fund and managed futures performance measurement, reveals that cryptocurrency hedge funds are down by about 34.6 percent year-to-date, after losing over 19 percent in May.

According to BarclayHedge’s data, March was a bad month for professional traders as hedge fund performance dropped over 30 percent, while in April it surged by 44.8 percent before seeing May’s decline.

The firm’s data shows that year-to-date (YTD), cryptocurrency hedge funds are down significantly, although they’re still outperforming bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, which started the year at about $13,400, and is currently trading at $6,700, a 50 percent decline. Barclay Hedge’s estimated performance calculations notably took into account data from 20 funds in May this year, and 27 in April.

Despite the poor performance, various analysts believe there are plenty of reasons to stay bullish on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. As CryptoGlobe covered, bitcoin bull Tom Lee, co-.founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, predicted the flagship cryptocurrency will hit $25,000 this year, ad $91,000 by March 2020.

Lee also noted that the crypto market’s “gut-wrenching” drop, which affected hedge fund performance, was caused by bitcoin futures contracts reaching their expiration dates. Per the analyst, historically bitcoin’s price fell roughly 18 percent 10 days before the financial products’ expiration date, followed by a recovery 6 days later.

Eccentric cybersecurity pioneer John McAfee has also revealed he’s bullish on bitcoin, as according to him “you can’t stop it.” He recently reiterated his $1 million by 2020 price target, while arguing the flagship cryptocurrency “can’t possible go to zero.”

Earlier this year, fund manager Phillip Nunn noted bitcoin would see both $6,000 and $60,000 due to its volatility. Recently he noted that we’re close to the $6,000 mark, and maintained that it will still see $60,000 by the end of the year. He told BusinessCloud:

“The prediction was based on, first of all, market volatility which we’re experiencing at the moment; I think that’s really apparent. I absolutely stand by my prediction. What you've got to remember is that the sharpest comparison to crypto in recent years is the Dotcom but actually crypto is a whole industry in reverse because the initial investment into it is from the crowd.”

At press time most cryptocurrencies are up by single-digit percentage points, after the market added well over $10 billion in only a few hours. Bitcoin itself is up by 4.35 in the last 24-hour period.