Citizens across the United States started receiving the much-anticipated $1,400 COVID-19 stimulus checks, which are aimed at covering the economic crash due to the virus outbreak. However, researchers at Mizuho Securities noted that 10% of all surveyed people plan to buy or bet on Bitcoin’s price movements with the stimulus checks.
The Mizuho research added that despite that respondents will be also buying stocks, Bitcoin prevails with an estimated 60% of all investments going into the world’s largest crypto by market capitalization. Researchers emphasized that if such a scenario happens, Bitcoin could add as much as 3% to its market cap, which currently sits at $1.04 trillion.
Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. equity strategist David Kostin believes that a large portion of the stimulus checks would find their way into the stock market.
“We expect households will be the largest source of equity demand this year,” Kostin added.
An estimate of 90% of U.S. households will be eligible to receive the stimulus checks. The added U.S. dollar inflation would see further hedging towards Bitcoin as some sort of a storage of value. Also, families may find the ability to invest their free money into riskier assets such as Bitcoin.
Source: MSUSA Proprietary Survey
The total stimulus deal equals a total of $1.9 trillion, with only $380 billion going directly into household for emergency aids. The news quickly roamed around the crypto community, emphasizing the bullish sentiment. Some of the most influential people in the sector made predictions that Bitcoin could see prices of around $160,000 per BTC.
Twitter user The Chairman, for example, urged his followers to buy Bitcoin, as its price would most likely increase substantially.
“Stimulus checks are coming. Buy the dip before the rocketship is refueled to go to the moon”, he tweeted.
However, Bitcoin is still not responding to the news, with its price dropping significantly from its March 13 all-time high of $61,683.86. Bitcoin dropped to a weekly low of $53,290.89, before bouncing back to its current price tag of $55,166.69. Trading volumes, on the other hand, are still high, which may indicate another bullish run.
The price drop coincided with the news that the Indian government is planning to criminalize the possession, issuance, mining, trading, and transfer of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin.