By Brett Arends
If you think booming bitcoin (BTCUSD) was the best investment of the year, think again.
The cryptocurrency has made headlines after surging nearly 130% in 2024 – thanks in part to hopes that the new regime in Washington will flood the digital asset industry with taxpayer money.
But nearly 400 U.S. stocks and 20 digital currencies delivered even higher returns this year, financial data shows.
That also applied to the humble cocoa bean (CC00), as MarketWatch’s Myra Saefong notes.
There too, cocoa beans are virtually useless. You can’t really use them for anything other than making chocolate, a tiny niche product that almost no one wants. By comparison, Bitcoin is absolutely essential for core human activities such as money laundering and speculating on the price of Bitcoin.
It once again raises the eternal question of whether it is better to be good or just be lucky.
Someone who bought shares in the genome-testing biotech stock GeneDX (WGS) early this year looks at the price of bitcoin and laughs: They’ve made 28 times their money in 2024, while shares are up from $2.75 at the start of this year . this year to $77.40 now.
At the beginning of this year, you could have bought shares in Quantum Computing (QUBT), a super-high-tech computer company, for 89 cents. Today, those shares would be worth $17.60 each, or about 20 times as much.
In total, FactSet lists more than 400 individual stocks that have posted bigger gains than 130% this year. When you eliminate penny stocks, over-the-counter stocks, and very, very small companies, you’re still left with more than 100 stocks worth more than $500 million.
This includes not only soaring high-tech stocks like Palantir (PLTR) (up 370%) and MicroStrategy (MSTR) (up nearly 600%), but also some well-known Main Street names. Online car dealer Carvana (CVNA) (over 300%), Freddie Mac (FMCC) (over 200%) and salad chain Sweetgreen (SG) (over 200%) all outperformed bitcoin this year. Even United Airlines (UAL), up 136%, is just ahead.
Bitcoin has also trailed nearly two dozen rival cryptocurrencies, including mantra (up 6,000%), pepe (PEPEUSD) (up 1,300%), dogwifhat (WIFUSD) (up 1,200%), bitget token (600%), XRP (XRPUSD) (up 260%) and Elon Musk’s beloved dogecoin (DOGEUSD) (+250%).
On Wall Street there is always someone luckier than you.
The crypto boom raises intriguing questions. This again includes the actual purpose of these online digital tokens – other than as a tool for money laundering and for speculating on the tokens themselves.
The original argument was that bitcoin was a libertarian projection, creating a “people’s money” that was completely independent of government. But Bitcoin Bros themselves have recently thrown this argument under the bus and have started calling on incoming US President Donald Trump to create a so-called national Bitcoin reserve, managed by the federal government.
Another way of saying this is that they want the Trump administration to buy their bitcoins at today’s high prices, using taxpayer money.
President-elect Trump seems open to the idea.
No wonder bitcoin prices have risen 40% since the election.
OpenSecrets, the Washington nonprofit that tracks money in politics, tells MarketWatch that the cryptocurrency industry donated $148 million to federal political candidates in the most recent election.
Cynics might suggest that the “new era” of crypto looks remarkably like the old era.
Meanwhile, at current bitcoin prices, the world’s entire supply of the digital currency is valued at $1.9 trillion. By comparison, FactSet calculates that this is 50% more than the current market value of the entire US energy industry, which had a net income of $110 million last year.
Which one would you rather own?
-Brett Arends
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12-24-24 0453ET
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