Communication-related tokens have surged over 18 percent in the last week, following in the footsteps of Zoom and other telecommunications stocks.

Increase in the remote workforce

During tumultuous times, investors are eager to find assets that can provide shelter or a hedge from volatility. For many decades, this usually meant either gold or gold mining company stocks, since they tended to have a negative correlation with the rest of the market.

Over the last decade, many have been prophesying Bitcoin (BTC) as the “new gold”. During the recent crisis, however, investors have turned to the telecommunication stocks, with some Capital Hill investors ending up in hot water.

Source: CryptoSlate

The motivation behind this convergence between traditional and crypto investors in the telecommunications sector seems obvious — the expectation that an increase in the remote workforce will create greater demand for these services.

Need for privacy

Status (SNT), an Ethereum-based privacy messenger that is not included in CryptoSlate’s Communications sector, has gained 77% since the March 12 bloodbath.

Source: Cointelegraph, Coinmarketcap

Johnny Zerah, head of marketing at Status, shared with Cointelegraph that currently, the second most popular public channel on Status is dedicated to the coverage of Coronavirus around the world He noted that:

“In these times, it’s important for people to have access to the information that doesn’t just come from the government sources”.

This supports the thesis that the general public, and crypto community in particular, are growing weary of what they perceive as attempts by governments to increase surveillance under the guise of coronavirus protection.

When it comes to Status messenger, investors may be betting on these fears. This also coincides with the strong performance of Basic Attention Token (BAT) which is the utility token of the privacy-preserving Brave browser.

Only time will tell whether these bets will pay off long-term.