Five hi-tech investments that trumped Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google in 2017

Shares of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google may have jumped more than 50 per cent this year, but these do not even come close to the gains made by four Chinese tech stocks and the runaway success of bitcoin.

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A man uses the bitcoin ATM in Hong Kong on December 8, 2017. Cryptocurrency bitcoin was the best-performing hi-tech investment this year, as its price rose above the US$20,000 mark at the start of trading on the CME, the world’s biggest futures exchange. Photo: AP

Published: 6:04am, 22 Dec 2017Updated: 11:01pm, 22 Dec 2017

If you thought gains of more than 50 per cent recorded by shares of technology vanguards Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google or Tesla would amount to a big score this year, then think again.
With slightly more than a week to go before the end of this year, here are five hi-tech investments, some more well known than the others, which have bested the performance of those US companies’ shares.

Bitcoin

Year to date gain: 1,892 per cent

The first and most in-demand cryptocurrency, bitcoin takes the crown as this year’s top hi-tech investment. Just ask newly minted bitcoin billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who had invested a chunk of their 2008 settlement with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the skyrocketing cryptocurrency.

The price of bitcoin, tagged by investors as “gold 2.0”, has surged about 19 times to about US$18,800 from US$998 in early January, according to recent quotes from the Luxembourg-based Bitstamp exchange.

Satoshi Nakamoto mined the initial block of bitcoin, known as a the genesis block, in January 2009, just a few months after publishing a paper about a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by an unknown person or persons who designed the cryptocurrency and the world’s first blockchain database.

The sharp rise in bitcoin prices has not only fuelled the growth of bitcoin mines and trading platforms, but also sparked concerns among central banks and regulators about a bubble waiting to burst.