Cryptocurrencies have become the most popular investment asset for the youngest. According to him Digital natives and millennials report: behaviors and strategies regarding savings that have been jointly prepared by the IE Foundation and the Fundación Mutualidad de la Abogacía, 50% of people between the ages of 20 and 29 currently have cryptocurrencies in their investment portfolio. The gap is more than significant with the next age group, those known as millenials (born from the 80s to the early 90s) for whom cryptos do not account for more than 17% of their investments and multiply by more than eight times those who are over 40 years old, with 6%.
“We worry. It is a very high percentage to be a totally speculative vehiclewith tremendous volatility, which does not have the same guarantees,” says Laura Núñez, director of the Family Savings Observatory, during the presentation of the study this Thursday in Madrid. It must be taken into account that “in Spain there is no authorized firm for the commercialization of cryptocurrencies since they are not regulated in Europe”clarifies the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) to this newspaper. The European Union, however, is working on a new regulation, MiCAand is scheduled to enter into force around mid-2024 after some delays.
The fact that 50% of twenty-somethings admit to investing in cryptos It has led them to be “the segment of the population most affected by deception and loss of value of their investments,” the document says. “Without going into considerations about the fundamentals of their intrinsic value, the high volatility experienced by all cryptocurrencies (including the so-called stable coins) together with the massive number of frauds that have come to light, especially in recent years, make cryptocurrencies an unsuitable asset for investing in household savings,” the experts point out. It must be taken into account that the crypto universe it encompasses much more than Bitcoin, the most recognized and most traded currency of all, along with Ethereum. In total it is calculated, according to the IE, that There are more than 20,000 different cryptocurrencies, compared to 180 legal tender currencies, such as the euro or the dollar.
“A call to attention is necessary, not only for regulators and supervisors, but also for financial institutions and banks, which, knowing the risk involved in investing in them, have facilitated access to them through the creation of products ETFs (cryptocurrency baskets), with a myopic (and not long-term) vision aimed at attracting the young segment of the population as future clients,” the report underlines.
Logically, the older you are, the risk you assume is always higher. This implies that is the Generation Z the one that says it invests the most in riskier assets, such as stocks, where 36% of those surveyed state that they have a portfolio and 14% have bondswhich is the highest percentage for fixed income of all age groups.