There is this weekly Bloomberg MLIV terminal and online reader poll conducted by the Bloomberg Markets Live team, which also runs the 24-hour MLIV blog on the terminal.
In a past Bloomberg MLIV Pulse poll conducted May 8-12 with 637 respondents, readers were asked, (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-15/debt-ceiling-negotiations-have-investors-eyeing-gold-if-us-defaults) "what would you buy if the U.S. reaches the national debt ceiling and defaults?
Most chose gold, with U.S. government bonds in second place and, unexpectedly, bitcoin in third. Moreover, among private investors, bitcoin would be preferred by 11.3% of the respondents, while among institutional investors, only 7.8%.
On the fourth place was the U.S. dollar, then the Japanese yen, and then the Swiss franc.
The strangest thing about this poll is that people apparently don't understand what a default is. U.S. Treasuries are exactly what America would default on if the national debt ceiling were reached.
And according to the report, 15.1% of private investors and 14% of funds don't understand that. If you add to that another 10.2% of private investors who will save their capital in the U.S. dollar, the picture becomes ridiculous at all.
Literally the question sounds like this: "What will you buy when the government refuses to pay back its own bonds? The answer is: the very bonds that the government will refuse to redeem.
That's like asking the question: where will you run to when America is nuked, half of you will say Europe, but a third will say America.
And it also seems that at least 10% of investors are not aware of what will happen to the U.S. dollar if the issuing country defaults. Of course it is hard to imagine that, the dollar has been the most solid asset for a century, the USA has never defaulted in recent history and it is very hard to believe it.
But after all, the question was asked in this very way to get an answer about assets alternative to the dollar and government bonds, yet a third of those surveyed chose dollars and government bonds.
Given that the second and fourth points make no sense, bitcoin is the second asset after gold that Americans will buy in case of default.