THE FUTURE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY
The last 18 months have transformed cryptocurrency. Its growth has been faster than ever, yet its future has never been so unclear.
Flush with time on their hands and few activities to spend money on, many consumers have forayed into crypto trading for the first time during the pandemic.
Everyday consumers, many not sure exactly what the blockchain is, followed the viral trail of Reddit threads, where talk of “stonks” and “diamond hands” pushed thousands to collectively inflate the price of certain assets “to the moon”. This led to a whole new category of “meme stocks”, breathing life back into defaulting companies like GameStop and AMC, and shaking the market to its core.
This all leads to one big trend. Cryptocurrency, once only understood among a relatively fringe community of anti-establishment investors, is now becoming a household name – and quickly. Analysts estimate that the global cryptocurrency market will more than triple by 2030, hitting a valuation of nearly $5 billion. Whether they want to buy into it or not, investors, businesses, and brands can’t ignore the rising tide of crypto for long.
But crypto can’t seem to escape paradoxes anywhere. Investors believe in regulation, yet are worried about many of the impacts that regulation will bring about. They’re eco-conscious, but crypto has a huge carbon footprint.
Digging into these nuances is key to understanding overall consumer sentiment – and predicting consumer behavior – around a very uncertain future of cryptocurrency.
The number of cryptocurrency investors has been steadily increasing around the world for a while, but recent growth has been explosive.
What’s more, the profile of investors has evolved. In the age of meme stocks and stimulus checks, it’s not such a niche hobby anymore. Rather, everyday consumers have seen this new asset class as a way to pad their portfolios with potentially more rewarding, albeit riskier, assets.
Compared to 2018, older consumers have begun to back crypto at much faster rates. In the U.S., consumers over 35 years old make up nearly half (47%) of those who expect to invest in cryptocurrency in the next 6 months.
For a lot of these current and potential investors, crypto offers a new way to handle their finances, and many also find that the financial freedom of crypto has liberated them from the rigidity of traditional banking.