Aussies prefer Bitcoin to gold

Australia may be the world’s second-largest producer, but Australians are more eager to invest in Bitcoin, which is now being called digital gold, than in the shiny yellow metal.

According to a Feb. 24 report by The Motley Fool, a survey involving more than 2,000 Australian investors showed that more are buying more cryptocurrencies than are investing in gold and silver. Among the investors surveyed, 12.6% have invested in a crypto asset, while only 12.1% of them held an investment in any precious metal. Stock shares are still at the top of the game, with 63.6% of the surveyed investors being involved with them.

About one third of those cryptocurrency buyers invested in digital assets for the first time following the March 2020 market crash that came with the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the report said. And, half of the new crypto buyers plan to become hodlers, with no intention of selling anytime soon. 

Bitcoin is increasingly being considered an asset that falls into the “store of value” role that gold has traditionally dominated. At the end of last year the co-founder of U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, Cameron Winklevoss, suggested that Bitcoin is gold 2.0 and will take over its role as the top store-of-value asset within the next decade.

While comments like this should not surprise anyone when coming from the CEO of a company in the cryptocurrency industry, some eyebrow-raising comments in the vein have been coming from traditional finance heavyweights recently.

In early January, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci said that “Bitcoin is better at being gold than gold.” In a similar tone, renowned investor and Real Vision founder Raoul Pal said earlier this month that Bitcoin is “basically eating the world” and explained:

“Bitcoin is destroying all other assets in the world, and I have never seen this before in my career where an asset has drawn the attention of the likes of Elon Musk and mainstream institutions like no other asset.”

Some institutions are apparently already treating gold and Bitcoin being two competing assets in the same class. In early February, an executive at asset management firm CCB International Securities revealed that the company had sold one-third of its gold to buy Bitcoin. The Motley Fool report also agrees that comparing the two assets makes a lot of sense:

“The comparison to gold is pertinent because investors are often attracted to Bitcoin for the same reasons as they are to gold. Both gold and bitcoin have finite supplies and cannot be ‘printed’ by governments. As such, they are touted as being ‘inflation-proof’ and a store of wealth and value.”