More and more investors have begun hedging positions amid the growing threat of inflation.
In fact, after Tesla announced that it bought more than $ 1 billion worth of Bitcoin last March, the trend for this kind of hedging has gained tremendous interest.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk even said on Twitter that he has sold 10% of his assets and earned a profit of roughly $ 100 million.
This move, in essence, proves that Bitcoin can be an alternative to keeping cash.
With that, other companies followed this step. For example, Nexon Co. announced that it also bought 1,717 bitcoins, which is about $ 100 million.
Nexon President and CEO Owen Mahoney explained that buying the cryptocurrency reflects a disciplined strategy to protect shareholder value and support the purchasing power of their monetary assets. Accordingly, he believes that in the long term, Bitcoin is stable enough to protect funds for future investments.
Nexon is the first publicly traded Japanese company to make such a major leap in the crypto economy. However, CoinPayments data shows that this is unlikely to be the only step. Japanese consumers seem to have fully embraced the crypto economy.
In fact, reports say the total volume of crypto transactions in the Japanese market is more than $ 1.5 billion. This is just in the first three months of 2021. In comparison, the total transaction volume in the North American market was $ 358 million.
And since the first quarter of 2020, the crypto market in Japan has grown by 181%, while in North America it climbed by only 142%.
Obviously, more and more companies are looking at cryptocurrencies as important tools in the global economy. Digital currencies have proven time and time again that they are important forms of payment.
And given the rise in global debt, it seems that individuals and companies are looking for ways to preserve wealth by insuring against inflation. This is why the same trend can be seen in safe haven markets like gold. Cryptocurrencies do not necessarily replace gold as a safe haven or hedge against inflation, but they retain their reputation as a global medium of exchange.
