Bitcoin trading remains prohibited in China, but this has not dissuaded its citizens from pursuing the cryptocurrency as their future investment alternative.

This is obvious from the rising quest pattern of the cryptocurrency in the second-largest economy in the world. Google Trends data shows that volume for the keyword ‘Bitcoin’ is expected to hit a perfect 100 this week in China, showing more consumers are looking into the cryptocurrency in the midst of the global economic crisis driven by Coronavirus.

Demand Cripples for Mutual Funds

The exhilarating Bitcoin trend emerges at the time when Chinese savers are reportedly looking for riskier alternatives to transfer out of popular money-market funds. Bloomberg found in its latest study that annualized returns on certain mutual funds are also smaller than the interest received from bank deposits.

Meanwhile, even safe-havens like 10-year government bonds in China have become less appealing after their yield has plummeted to its lowest since 2002.

Chinese savers are now clearly running out of viable alternatives.

The global Coronavirus pandemic is affecting all the major sectors like manufacturing. For now, the healthcare and cloud sectors of China are the remaining best bets on the mainstream market. With their exchange-traded funds returning at least 20 percent of profits by 2020.

Investments Bitcoin Could Grow in China

The similarity between growing ‘Bitcoin’ trends in Google and searching for riskier assets by Chinese investors is possibly no coincidence.

Recent history shows an anecdotal association between the two metrics. For example, in 2019, search volume for ‘bitcoin’ topped Baidu against the backdrop of the US-China war on commerce. The crypto-currency reached its year-to-date high near $14,000 in the same period.

Later, analysts noticed that Chinese investors used bitcoin. As a means of protecting their investments against declining yuan at the time. This shows the possibility of people using the cryptocurrency as returns in conventional markets are getting too meager. The same may happen now.

According to economic data released Friday, the Coronavirus pandemic has driven China’s economy down to 6.8 percent in Q2. The IMF forecasts that this year the country’s GDP would fall by 3 percent, leaving its top sectors under strain.

The People’s Bank of China is expected to introduce a huge stimulus package in response, Nasdaq says. That would leave yuan under stress that, in effect, would cause some investors to seek protection in bitcoin.