"The old saying 'Buy a house, it will go up' is outdated... Last year's top returns were gold and 'Igeot'"

Bitcoin and Gold Lead Investment Returns Last Year
Domestic Stocks and Real Estate Lag Behind, Yen Shows Minimal Gains

Last year, the highest-yielding investment assets were Bitcoin and gold. Bitcoin, typically considered highly speculative, and gold, regarded as a representative safe asset, both surged sharply. In contrast, investments in stocks, real estate, and the Japanese yen either yielded no significant income or even incurred losses.

On the 27th, Daishin Securities compiled the investment returns by asset from the beginning of last year until the 23rd, revealing that Bitcoin (in US dollars) had the highest return at 133.79%. Bitcoin's price started at $44,184.37 on January 2 last year and jumped to $13,296.57 on the 23rd.

The financial assets with the highest returns last year were Bitcoin and gold. Photo by Getty Images

The virtual asset market, including Bitcoin, continues to perform well this year. The Trump administration is pursuing a plan to stockpile Bitcoin as a national strategic asset. Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world's largest asset management firm, expressed optimism at the Davos Forum on the 22nd, suggesting that Bitcoin's price could reach $700,000 per coin.

As Bitcoin's price surpassed 150 million won and maintained its upward trend, domestic coin investors also experienced a surge. According to data submitted by virtual asset exchanges to Kim Hyun-jung, a member of the Democratic Party, as of the end of last year, there were 25.54 million users across the five major exchanges?Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, and GOPAX. This figure far exceeds the 14 million individual investors in stocks.

Last year, the Bitcoin return rate reached 133.79%. Photo by Yonhap News

The wholesale price of one Korean gold unit (3.75g) rose 47.68% over the year, from 367,000 won to 542,000 won.

Choi Jin-young, a researcher at Daishin Securities, analyzed, "Last year, gold was influenced more by the start of the US Federal Reserve's policy rate cut cycle, the accelerated issuance of US Treasury bonds and the resulting distrust, and the accelerated gold purchases by governments and central banks, rather than by safe asset demand."

Thanks to the US stock market repeatedly hitting all-time highs, overseas stock investments also yielded substantial returns. The SPDR S&P 500 ETF, which tracks the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 index, rose 28.93% during this period. Investments in the US dollar (11.21%), bonds (7.00%), and crude oil (6.02%) also showed solid performance. Deposit yields stood at 4.14%.

On the other hand, domestic stock investments, which experienced a prolonged downturn last year, were the only ones to record negative returns. The representative ETF linked to the KOSPI 200, KODEX200, posted a return of -7.43%, and the average return of domestic stock funds, an indirect investment method, also recorded a loss at -0.46%.

Real estate returns were also sluggish. The comprehensive housing sales price index, which the Korea Real Estate Board indexes and publishes monthly based on nationwide housing sales prices, rose only 0.27%, from 96.04 to 96.30.

With the prolonged depreciation of the yen, the investment return on the Japanese yen was minimal at 0.30%.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.