It has been roughly seven months since the US government sent the first stimulus checks worth $1,200 to many citizens. Interestingly, that amount would now be worth nearly $3,000 if invested in Bitcoin as the asset price has significantly appreciated since then, unlike the dollar.
World governments were caught by surprise when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out earlier this year. One of the first orders of business included seizing regular life as we knew it. Nation-wide lockdowns started occurring globally. The streets became empty as people remained in their houses.
It’s still debatable if these extreme measures had a real positive impact on the spread of the virus months later. However, one certain thing is that it had real consequences on many people’s jobs, and, naturally, their finances.
Most powerful economies responded by issuing so-called stimulus packages. They operate as tax rebates and incentives to prevent financial crisis while providing much-needed cash to struggling citizens.
The world’s largest country by nominal GDP led the charge with massive package deals worth trillions of dollars. Every adult making below $75,000 a year in the US was entitled to a check worth $1,200. The first such checks were mailed out in mid-April.
Although most reports at the time indicated that people were using their recently obtained dollars for food and rent, it’s compelling to check what would have happened if they were actually invested in bitcoin. After all, the largest US-based crypto exchange Coinbase saw substantial uptick of deposits worth precisely $1,200 during that time.
The ever-creative cryptocurrency community established a Twitter profile following how is the hypothetical investment in BTC performing. It tracks how much the $1,200 would have been worth if that money was put into bitcoin on April 15th.
At the time, the primary cryptocurrency was trading between $6,600 and $6,800. So, if someone had indeed swapped $1,200 for BTC at $6,600, he would have ended up with a little over 0.18 bitcoins. Today, the asset trades around $16,000. As such, that same amount of 0.18 bitcoins would be worth north of $2,900. This would mean an ROI of 142% in just seven months.
It’s also worth exploring what has happened with the dollar since then. While BTC has skyrocketed in value, the world’s reserve currency actually declined compared to other fiat.
The dollar traded around 0.920 against the euro in mid-April, which was close to the yearly high. It has lost 8% since then and is down to 0.845.
The USD has also lost over 6% against the British Pound and the Chinese Yuan. Prominent US economist Peter Schiff predicted an even worse future for the dollar, saying that even hyperinflation is not entirely out of the picture.
On the other hand, Gemini co-founder Tyler Winklevoss believes that the aforementioned stimulus packages will continue to harm the USD and noted that they are a “code to buy Bitcoin.”