So, tech stocks have made a comeback just lately, eh? Yeah whatevz. Investors are apparently more interested in stacking Satoshis – that is, buying Bitcoin (BTC).
And that’s according to a recent study put together by crypto-comparison and research outfit BitStacker.
Are they a particularly well-known source? Not that we’re aware of, but still, we can’t resist their well-researched findings – information gathered from Google Trends regarding how investors globally are searching for keywords relating to the buying of Bitcoin as well as Apple, Tesla, Amazon and Microsoft stocks.
Data was compiled over the past 12 months, between January 23, 2022 and Jan 21, 2023, we’re reliably informed.
And BitStacker used a score to “represent the average interest over this time period, with a value of 100 representing the peak popularity of the search term, whereas a value of 50 would show that the term is half as popular. A search term with a score of zero would mean that the term didn’t have any interest on the search engine.”
And the survey says? Bitcoin
The report covers its metrics and how it came to the results in further detail, which you can read about here. The upshot is, though, that the OG and leading crypto by market cap – that’d be Bitcoin – was by far the most popular investing option compared with those others mentioned.
With “buy BTC” as the leading term, the crypto’s average Google Trends score of 55 was 6.88 times higher compared with the next highest term on the list which was “buy TSLA” – with a score of eight.
Meanwhile, Amazon scored five, Microsoft four and Apple a paltry three in terms of Google searches.
Apple’s score is 18.33 times lower than that of Bitcoin. Suffer in your jocks, Tim Cook! Actually, to be fair to the guy, he has actually expressed in the past he’s dabbled in crypto investing and is generally crypto curious.
The report also revealed some interesting links between people’s internet searches and the assets’ return on investment in 2023 so far.
And, again, Bitcoin easily outperformed the listed tech stocks with a 38.57% ROI for the year to date compared with just 15.77% for Amazon – next best on the list.
Kris Lucas, BitStacker.com analyst, added the following commentary to go with the stats:
“Cryptocurrencies suffered a difficult year in 2022. [Sure did – here’s Stockhead’s 2022 wrap.] With multiple bankruptcies and hacks in the cryptocurrency sector, it caused a negative outlook for all major crypto coins such as Bitcoin.
“However, with an increase in Google searches for Bitcoin, it seems as though the original cryptocurrency could become a new kind of digital gold once again.”
BitStacker’s report certainly aligns well with some of the more well-known analysis and crypto/tech stock comparisons we’ve seen recently. Including that of Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior commodity strategist Mike “As Seen on US TV” McGlone.
Here he was back in December, predicting Bitcoin to surge against shares of Elon Musk’s famous electric vehicle firm.