Coronavirus Outbreak Boosts Bitcoin Price Up As Investors Panic

In "risk-on" scenarios where investors' appetite crave for assets that tend to move in an amplified magnitude, it would not be wrong to assume that those with capital would want to give cryptocurrencies -- especially something like Bitcoin (BTC) -- a shot at a permanent spot in their portfolios.

Bitcoin, in all its 11 years of existence, is nothing short of volatile -- it can go parabolic in a short period. Once an investor catches it at a price positioned for more upside potential, returns can be enormous.

That may be the case in 2017 when the climate was just hot on speculation, but with what's going on in the world lately, the exact reasons for buying Bitcoin may not be the same three years ago.

Those who invest in cryptos and follow the market religiously are likely aware of how BTC appreciated from the start of 2020, and they know that bullish fundamental components and other factors are affecting that. One of those "other" factors is Bitcoin's correlation to gold.

War threats from the U.S.-Iran conflict inspired fears, and typically, in stressful events like this, investors react by pooling money out of riskier assets like stocks into safe-haven assets such as gold, government bonds, the U.S. dollar, and others. The outcome is the risky asset's price goes down, and the safer one goes up. Surprisingly, Bitcoin, in this instance, went up.

After President Trump "de-escalated" the two countries' rising friction, a new threat surfaced in the form of the dreaded coronavirus, which is feared of going pandemic. Just when crypto naysayers think that BTC's parallel move with gold in January is a one-off coincidental occurrence, it went up again as a result of the virus.

At the start of the week, when investors had plenty of time to absorb any anxiety-triggering coronavirus update during the weekend, BTC spiked to a high of $9,600 from $9,300. Monday was also the first time that Chinese stocks reopened trading for the first time since Jan. 23, and investors welcomed it by a sell-off that resulted in an almost 10 percent drop.

Could this event have triggered investors to move money again to BTC? It wouldn't be wise to assume that it's the case now, but this marks roughly the second time this year that bad news caused the popular crypto to trade higher.

BTC is trading at $9,776 as of press time.