Covid-19 is destroying economies all over the world. Millions of people are out of work in industries that are unlikely to survive the pandemic even if a vaccine does come to fruition at some point in the near future.

The one area that is seeing some positive news due to the pandemic is cryptocurrency. Those that have invested in blockchain technology or Bitcoin are seeing some gains that are quite unexpected.

Yet, Pakistan is missing out on many of these gains because of the ban on cryptocurrency exchanges. Although a bitcoin wallet in Pakistan is in the gray area of cryptocurrency, the exchanges that allow you to load your wallet are not allowed so it has put a cool blanket on what could have been solid benefits to the country.

Traditional investing is suffering

Markets all over the world are in turmoil. Investors are rightly spooked and not sure where, when or even if they should invest at this point in time. Companies that are at all vulnerable are likely not to make it so they are not likely to find investors during this time.

Cryptocurrency, however, is thriving. It did take a dip in the beginning weeks of the pandemic, but has since rebounded. In fact, Bitcoin is now already back to its pre pandemic levels.

What will a second wave of Covid do? Nobody knows for sure as there is no consensus as to what the next wave will look like. Will it be worse than the original wave? Or has the virus weakened and will act much differently than it had before?

How traditional investing will respond will depend on how things look as far as the human toll the second wave will have. However, crypto may not see much of a dip at all since it proved to be resilient during the first wave.

People turning toward cryptocurrency

Big businesses and even many governments are turning to cryptocurrency to provide some stability to their finances during this time. Pensions in particular are vulnerable at the moment so some governments are turning to cryptocurrency to make sure that the funds are not going to dry up if they were to stay in traditional ones.

Individuals are looking for places to park their assets and the blockchain is providing one of the few safe harbors for it at the moment.

The lack of traditional investing is slowing down economies that are not allowing blockchain based currency. As people have less money to spend or are afraid to spend what they have, this has a chilling effect on spending and the economy.

Pakistan is one of those countries with the ban so there is little recourse for citizens to protect themselves against a struggling economy and inflation. Many people are looking to diversify their portfolio and are unable to do so legally in places like Pakistan.

Local companies are also looking to employ the blockchain for many applications to save money and also raise money through tokenization. This keeps people working but only where it’s legal.