Rising inflation has prompted many investors to turn to gold or some form of gold, like physical bars, coins, or tokenized, says a survey by Paxos, a blockchain infrastructure platform. The respondents revealed that equities market troubles and worry around geopolitical factors and fiat currency debasement have been some of their top motivations.
The survey gathered responses from over 1,000 adults in the US, Singapore, UK, and Germany. A third of respondents regard Bitcoin as a viable alternative. But concerns about the crypto market ranked fifth among the reasons to purchase more gold.
Anoushka Rayner, Paxo’s head of growth for commodities, believes the demand for the relative stability of gold investments will continue to increase. She noted a wild card in the mix as well. Rayner said the popularity of BTC is poised to affect the market. 33% of respondents see Bitcoin as the “new gold” and want to purchase more of it, instead of gold.
Mike McGlone, a senior commodity strategist for Bloomberg Intelligence, highlighted that Bitcoin is one of the best-performing assets in the history of mankind. He said when the Fed takes away the punch bowl, it will obviously go down. McGlone was referring to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates by 75 basis points last week. This was the sharpest rate hike since 1994. The strategist pointed out crude oil as the best hedge against inflation, so far this year. But he also tweeted that crude oil may have gotten a bit too hot within an enduring bear market.
McGlone says deflation, an environment in which buyers of both assets – gold and Bitcoin could do well, is the bigger risk. Astute investors know that they got to have some Bitcoin in the bucket or they risk holding an analog asset in a world that’s going digital.
