The new coronavirus spreading caused severe pressure on global markets, making them crash. Even assets, which people often consider as safe-havens for storing value – like gold, took a hit and experienced a decrease in prices. Financial experts are comparing the current market situations to the events that occurred during 2008’s market crisis. Despite an early-morning rally, the majority of U.S. stocks plunged down even further.
However, one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya, raised a flag of concern for traders, trying to make profits from the short-term market fluctuations. The former Facebook executive proposed to “relocate 1% of their net worth into Bitcoin”.
“Traders and investors must seize the moment, as nobody wants to see coronavirus havoc and Dow plunging with 2000 points. It’s idiotic not to put a small percentage in fundamentally uncorrelated assets, such as Bitcoin, as the entire market is correlated”, Palihapitiya told CNBC.
The former Facebook executive became famous in Silicon Valley, when he left the social media giant, announcing the leave with “don’t be a douchebag.” However, Chamath Palihapitiya continued with his 1% strategy, stating that “investing 1% of your net worth in Bitcoin is something like insurance that sits under the bed. You may not need it, but when you do – it’s there.”
Palihapitiya, who is also a chairman at Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, even got into a head-to-head collision with Warren Buffet and his “outdated point of view” attention toward cryptocurrencies. Buffet mocked Bitcoin, as well as other cryptocurrencies, for having “no real value.”
Bitcoin managed to start 2020 with a push over the psychological barrier of $10,000 per one BTC coin. The initial push seemed to be a geopolitical response to the conflict between the U.S. army and Iran. Coronavirus fears also put an increase in demand for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, based on market capitalization.
Nevertheless, some crypto experts believe in the role of Bitcoin as a haven for investments, along with the Japanese yen and gold, which turned out to be “a bit overblown”. The reason, according to BoltGlobal’s co-founder Christel Quek is that “cryptocurrencies failed to become a safe-haven because investors decided to leverage down and compensate for any inflicted damage,”
Investors are cautious, as coronavirus may tumble down the value of cryptocurrencies. However, crypto researcher Luke Martin stated that cryptocurrencies, and Bitcoin in particular, do not correlate with other asset classes, such as stocks, CFDs, and bonds.
“If the stock market crashes, this won’t necessarily mean Bitcoin crashes too. If gold skyrockets, for example, Bitcoin’s price may stay the same.”, Martin added.
Week 10 of 2020 was the worst in performance for the entire stock market, as stocks lost $1,5 trillion due to the coronavirus outbreak. The global economy growth most probably would slow down. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) raised a flag of concern on the topic, forecasting no more than 2,5% global market growth.