Investors Defy Crypto Market Correction to Remain Optimistic

According to a September 6, 2018 report in Business Wire, investors are still generally keen on investing in cryptoassets over the coming year despite the general crypto market downturn. This is one of a number of insights presented in the Mid-Year Cryptocurrency and Blockchain survey by SharesPost.

Unchanged Optimism

As a FINRA-registered broker-dealer, SEC-registered Alternative Trading System (ATS) and Registered Investment Advisor, SharesPost provide liquidity solutions to crypto investors and as such, it is uniquely positioned to keep a finger of the pulse of investment trends.

The company’s 2018 mid-year survey released recently was conducted in July and included online responses from 2,490 retail investors and 528 accredited investors.

The results of the survey show that even though the largest crypto market assets – bitcoin and ethereum – have shown a 48 percent average decline since the initial survey in January 2018, 59 percent of survey respondents in July indicated that they will dedicate a larger portion of their investment capital to digital currencies over the next 12 months.

This figure is only slightly less than the figure recorded in the January survey at a time when the crypto market was at an all-time high.

Speaking about the results of the survey, Rohit Kulkarni, SharesPost Inc. Managing Director and Head of Research said:

“Based on our survey, crypto investors haven’t lost faith and are planning to buy more. Importantly, this survey indicates that this correction is separating long-term believers from short-term day traders.”

Key Survey Findings and Insights

Amongst other things, the survey revealed that across both accredited and retail investment categories – Bitcoin remains the most widely held crypto assets. Ethereum is more popular with accredited investors, which is also the case with Ripple. The survey also showed that ever since the downturn began at the start of the year, bitcoin has become the preferred crypto assets of choice for both categories of investors.

In part because of this, investors are more likely to express optimism over bitcoin’s future prospects than ethereum. Another reason for this view is that the ICO boom of 2017 has not continued into 2018, meaning that Ethereum has not hosted a series of impressively successful ICOs this year, unlike last year.

In addition, the list of the organization implementing blockchain technology in their operations is growing rapidly. The survey showed that 32 percent of accredited investors and 49 percent of retail investors report that their employers are planning to implement blockchain technology in the near future.

For retail investors specifically, that is a 12 percent growth over January’s figure, which supports the theory that interest in and support for blockchain implementations is actually growing regardless of the crypto market’s performance.

In the same period, the proportion of accredited investors who believe that crypto will achieve mainstream adoption in 2020 fell to 27 percent from 51 percent, while among retail investors it fell from 42 percent to 37 percent.