Yesterday, the world was aghast as they watched oil prices tumble into negative territory for the first time in history. The shocking price drop took the cryptocurrency community by storm, who have compared the long-traded commodity to an illiquid altcoin.
But this isn’t the first time crypto traders are showing an increased interest in traditional markets, with increasing chatter around the stock market, gold, and much more.
Cryptocurrency Community Increasingly Turns to Traditional Markets Amidst Historic Volatility
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple turned many everyday Joe’s into investors and traders for the first time. The allure of the emerging financial technology and wealth-generating rallies introduced investing and trading to many millennials for the first time.
Boomers who have long controlled the wealth in the world, preferred stocks, commodities, forex, and more.
But as cryptocurrency assets plummeted in valuations, and with traditional markets more explosive with volatility than ever before due to the coronavirus causing mass disruption and economic recession, traders cannot peel their eyes away from the record-breaking drops and historical rallies taking place left and right.
Related Reading | Stock Market Prints TD9 Sell Signal, Correlated Bitcoin Could Plunge in Tandem
Oil prices tanked yesterday by over 300%, into negative territory for the first time in the asset’s long history. Watching an asset fall to zero, and then even deeper, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and it has caused an eruption in discussion amongst the cryptocurrency community.
Crypto traders are used to 300% moves, thanks to the low liquidity environment across many altcoins, however, in such a widely traded asset like oil, the event is monumental.
Well-known figures in the cryptocurrency industry began comparing oil prices to other assets, such as Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao comparing the price of the commodity to his native utility token, Binance Coin.
1 #BNB? = 153 Barrels of oil. ? https://t.co/aum4rNQJ0b
— CZ Binance ??? (@cz_binance) April 21, 2020
Others posit the question that if oil can drop to zero, what’s preventing Bitcoin and other crypto assets from doing the same? Even more have called attention to how maybe Bitcoin isn’t such a risky investment, after all, considering that something in as wide use as oil could become worthless.
Related Reading | VIX Points To Turbulent Week As Oil Prices Tank to Lowest in Two Decades
It wasn’t just oil markets, either. The Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ all saw strong drops yesterday after a sustained rally from lows put in around Black Thursday last month.
Are you even doing crypto if you haven’t tweeted about $OIL and $SPX in the last 24 hours?
— Goomba {C-fork maximalist} (@im_goomba) April 21, 2020
The historic volatility in traditional markets hasn’t been this high since the recession in 2008, according to the VIX volatility index by CBOE. The massive rallies followed by epic declines are opportunities for traders to profit, making these markets even more attractive suddenly than crypto.
With traditional markets showing such strong price movements, will it lure more traders away from crypto, and potentially cause trading volumes to drop further? And is the move to traditional markets partly responsible for cryptocurrency trading volumes dwindling since the March collapse?