Chart: Gold Popularity vs Bitcoin

The price of Bitcoin rose this week to $23,600 Breaking the old record set three years ago. Historically low interest rates have increased interest in Bitcoin, while more and more institutional parties are recognizing the virtual currency as an alternative asset class. But how does the popularity of Bitcoin compare to gold and silver?

The cryptocurrency shares a number of properties with gold, making it an alternative means of savings for some. There will also be new financial products such as ETFs for Bitcoin next year, making it easier for investment funds to invest in the virtual currency.

The current rally in Bitcoin therefore seems different from the one three years ago. At the time, the virtual currency was still relatively new to the general public and received a lot of attention in the media. Speculators stepped in en masse, but then the price quickly went down again. This year, however, the rally came as a surprise to many people, as the number of searches is now significantly lower than it was three years ago.

Bitcoin vs precious metals

If we compare the popularity of the virtual currency with that of precious metals, then we see an interesting development. For example, the interest in gold has continued to increase over the years. Since the corona crisis, the number of searches for gold has risen even faster.

Investors and savers are not only concerned about the economy, but also about the value of money. Due to negative interest rates, it is no longer profitable to leave money in a savings account. Also, $17 trillion in government bonds are now yielding negative returns.

Gold and Bitcoin in particular seem to benefit from this trend, as the number of searches for silver has remained fairly constant in recent years. That doesn't change the fact that silver was a good investment this year. Because the silver market is much smaller than the gold market, the price of this metal ended up rising much faster.

Since the beginning of this year, the price of silver in dollars has risen 45%, while the Gold price 24% higher. Bitcoin did even better, as the price of the virtual currency is even three times higher at the time of writing than at the beginning of this year.

Popularity Bitcoin versus gold and silver (click for larger version)

Explanation: The results from the graph above are taken from Google Trends and are based on the English search terms. This can distort the picture slightly, because gold and silver are written differently in different languages. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has the same name in all countries. The results from this chart are global, which means that the scores for gold and silver may be slightly higher in reality.

The image above this article was taken from QuoteInspector and is freely available under the Creative Commons license.

This contribution was made from Geotrendlines