It’s now clear that the coronavirus pandemic made the world’s most powerful tech companies even stronger, but what if Bitcoin was a tech stock?
Apple and Microsoft retained their trillion-dollar market caps through the ups and downs of the greater stock market, and worldwide lockdowns even helped both Alphabet and Amazon secure access to the exclusive cuatro comma club for the very time time.
In fact, the NASDAQ 100 index — a popular benchmark that tracks the market performance of the US’ largest tech companies — is actually positive for the year ; it’s up more than 6% while the broader S&P 500 index is down by a similar amount.
We wondered: how did Bitcoin compare to top-tier companies like Intel, PayPal, or Tesla as COVID-19 swept across the world? To help visualise this, Hard Fork built the bar chart race below.
It maps 2020’s major events against the waxing and waning of the NASDAQ 100, and shows a running total of the NASDAQ 100’s collective market cap (in billions.)
Toggle the filter to sort market caps from lowest to highest to experience the COVID-19 crisis from the perspective of mid-cap stocks like Starbucks and Costco. To help keep the data focused, we’ve chosen to only show you those companies with market caps over $100 billion.
Keep an eye out for Netflix: just after the WHO labeled the COVID-19 situation a pandemic, plucky traders boosted it from the middle of the charts to eclipse the likes of Adobe, PepsiCo, and Comcast in a matter of weeks.
(NB: If the visualisation doesn’t show, try loading this page in your browser’s “Desktop Mode.”)
Bitcoin would class in the NASDAQ 100’s top 16 stocks
As for BTC: you’ll see that if Bitcoin were a legitimate company, it would’ve thrived alongside tech’s finest. Its overall market cap places it squarely between Elon Musk‘s two corporate babies, PayPal and Tesla.
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Of course, the irony is that serious traders would deem BTC almost entirely worthless if it were a legal entity required to submit documents to the SEC.
Still, we’ll forever have this bar chart.
Reliance Jio has raised more money in 2020 than all Indian tech startups combined in 2019
India’s biggest network provider Reliance Jio today announced that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund, The Public Investment Fund (PIF), has invested $1.5 billion in Jio Platforms.
That takes makes it the 11th investment in J io Platform this year, with the Indian company raising $15.2 billion to date . With that, Jio has achieved a notable record: it has raised more money than all Indian tech startups combined in 2019. According to data from research firm Tracxn, Indian startups raised $14.5 billion last year .
Jio’s investment spree started in April with Facebook pumping in $5.7 billion in exchange for 9.9% equity. After that, some notable firms such as Silver Lake Funds, General Atlantic, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) have invested in Jio.
India‘s richest man and Reliance Industries’ chairman, Mukesh Ambani, started Jio as a network provider in 2016. The carrier now has more than 388 million consumers in India. Despite the size and financial backing, Amabani still refers to the company as “ a startup built in India for India by Indians.”
Reliance Jio now refers to itself as Reliance Jio Platforms that encapsulates the network business in addition with its ecommerce offering JioMart, entertainment apps such as JioSaavn, JioCinema, and JioTV, and a chat app named JioChat.
Alibaba to pump $28 billion into cloud computing to handle coronavirus traffic
Alibaba has pledged to invest 200 billion yuan ($28 billion) in its own cloud computing infrastructure over the next three years — roughly half the company’s revenue from the last fiscal year.
The Chinese tech giant will use the cash to build more data centers, Bloomberg reports , as well as fund internal development of supportive tech like AI accelerator chips and semiconductors.
Alibaba‘s infrastructure reportedly struggled with the traffic associated China’s strict coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown measures imposed in February.
The company said it hopes the cash will “speed up the recovery process” for its businesses negatively affected by the pandemic.
In fact, COVID-19 has likely wrecked the retail businesses that make up a huge chunk of Alibaba‘s overall revenue, like Tmall and Taobao.
As a whole, the amount of money that flowed through these units in 2020’s first quarter was expected to shrink after growing annually by more than 30% for years, noted the Financial Times.
Daily sales for major brands commonly sold via Alibaba, such as Estée Lauder and Uniqlo, also reportedly fell between 40 and 80% when compared with January to February 2019.
On the other hand, Reuters notes that Alibaba‘s cloud division is one of its fastest growing , with its revenue breaking 10.7 billion yuan ($1.51 billion) for the first time ever in last year’s fourth quarter.
At the time, consumer data showed Alibaba controled more than 46% of the entire Chinese cloud computing market — let’s see what another $28 billion does to that number.
