Has the popularity of bitcoins reduced interest of people in stocks?
I think emergence of Bitcoin as a new asset class and its rapidly growing popularity has drawn significant attention of small and institutional investors, despite its inherent characteristic of volatility. Bitcoin's status is a new emerging technology has created sense of excitement among investors. It is widely believed that early investors in such technologies potentially yield huge returns on their investment. Stocks are a different asset class representing ownership in companies and stocks are influenced by various factors such as overall state of economy, company's individual performance and overall market condition. It is possible that some investors may allocate some portion of their investment portfolio in Bitcoin and other crypto currencies, while maintaining their interest in traditional stocks.
Some big money holders prefer to invest not in bitcoin itself, but in companies on the stock market that own bitcoin such as MicroStrategy Inc. Marathon Digital Holdings, Coinbase, Square Inc. Thus, they can pay less taxes and the procedure is clear to them, but this applies to those countries in which there is no clear transparency in paying income tax in cryptocurrency, in particular bitcoin.